Escalation
by Lexical Item
Summary: Crane is fascinated and wants to investigate the fears buried deep in the Joker's fractured mind. Meanwhile, the Joker is playing an indecipherable game that tests Crane's own limits. It is the nature of things to escalate.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, not my world

**Warnings:** Rated for some medical gore and eventual slash content

**Escalation**

There was a faint rustle as Dr. Crane closed the psychology journal. He took off his glasses for a moment to rub at his eyes. It was late. Time had slipped through his fingers while he had been absorbed in the findings of a recent study on the role of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in memory consolidation. It had been fascinating, but he was tired. He made his way to toward his bathroom. Hygiene took precedence over sleep, regardless of the hour.

Before he had gone two steps there was a harsh knocking at his door. In hindsight, Crane could only blame his fatigue for his failure to arm himself with fear toxin before going to the door. If he were in his usual frame of mind, he never would have allowed such an oversight. The knock had sounded innocuous enough, but as a wanted criminal, he should have been more alert.

When Crane opened the door a gun barrel was waved under his nose. The ex-psychiatrist barely had time to react before an assorted group of miscreants barged into the living room and laid out an unconscious form on the couch. It would be ironic if the individual was in some drug-induced coma. Unfortunately, the doctor was not in a position to appreciate poetic justice. He would have sprinted to his closest stash of toxin if the largest member of the group wasn't brandishing his firearm in a pointed and professional manner. Then Crane's mind caught up with the next important detail.

"Wait a moment. Are you wearing a clown mask?" Crane asked in a derisive tone. Then, almost of its own accord, the doctor's gaze slid toward the unconscious individual.

Oh no.

Every single person in Gotham could instantly recognise that face, or at least the stylised design that adorned that face.

"What is the Joker doing here?" Crane demanded. The gun suddenly seemed to be a secondary and rather unimportant threat.

A particularly nervous individual with a tic, who was thankfully unarmed, approached Crane. "He-he was in-injured," the henchclown stammered.

"Yes, I can see that." The doctor hoped the Joker hadn't been injured too badly so that he wouldn't bleed all over the upholstery. "But what on earth possessed you to bring him _here_?"

"You're a doc-doctor."

"I'm a _psychiatrist_."

One of the more collected henchclowns approached. He seemed to be the one in charge while the Joker was out of commission. He was also the one who had been waving around his firearm so carelessly.

"If you're a psychiatrist then you did medicine for a few years before you went into psychiatry," he announced.

Crane scowled at the henchclown. It was true, of course, but laymen weren't supposed to be so well informed, let alone laymen who were stupid or insane enough to care about the Joker's well being.

"Be that as it may, I have neither the facilities, nor the equipment nor the inclination to treat him," Crane replied. His gaze slid back to the Joker once again. Despite himself, the doctor's curiosity was piqued. "Though, what is wrong with him precisely? In the physical sense, that is," he clarified after a moment's thought.

The lead thug sighed and scratched the back of his head. "He got a long knife gash on his arm a couple of days back. Don't ask how. Anyway, he seemed fine with it, just sort of sewed it up. Then he started to get sick and then feverish and today, we found him like this."

Crane nodded absently as he observed the Joker. His thugs hadn't thought to remove the greasepaint, or perhaps they hadn't dared to remove it. Where the Joker's skin was visible beneath the smeared makeup, it was tinged with an unhealthy pallor. He also seemed to be sweating profusely and he twitched in his fever-sleep.

"Don't you have some seedy back-alley doctor to take him to? And just how did you manage to find me?"

"Look, I'll answer your questions later, but right now you've got to fix up the boss."

"And why would I do that?" Crane asked.

The thug hefted his gun in a way that was clearly designed to intimidate. "Do you really need to ask that question?"

"But why would you care about what happens to him?" the doctor persisted. He knew that they wouldn't kill him. He was currently the most useful person in the room. Then again, the Joker's minions weren't known for their reasonable, well-adjusted mindsets.

"Boss first, questions later." Apparently that was the end of the conversation.

Crane sighed and rubbed his temples. "Fine," he snapped. "Put the gun down. I won't be threatened while I'm working. You," Crane pointed to the nervous henchclown. "Go and boil some water in the kitchen. You, next to him, the bathroom is just over there, get me some towels. The blues, if you please, I won't have 'your boss' infecting the good ones. And you with the tattoo, there's a 70% ethanol solution in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Get it, and don't even think of drinking it."

Crane turned back to the leader. "_You_ can get him out of his jacket and shirt. I need to get at the wound. Cut him out if necessary. I will also need one of his knives—a small, sharp one."

The leader nodded and went over to the couch. Crane took a moment to appreciate having the menial tasks completed, if not expertly, then at least enthusiastically. Perhaps this why the Joker keep a selection of thugs on hand. Even Scarecrow, who had been clamouring for Crane to get some fear toxin and dose the intruders, had quieted down to appreciate the power of giving orders and having them followed.

In as much time as it had taken the water to boil, Crane found himself sitting on one of the hard-backed living-room chairs which had been pulled up beside the couch. The Joker's thugs were anxiously arrayed behind him. The Joker himself was bared to the waist, exposing an ugly and obviously infected wound on his upper arm. The site was inflamed and red streaks crawled across the flesh in an interesting pattern. There was a faint sickly-sweet scent permeated the area above the wound. The whole situation was rather surreal.

Crane sterilised one of Joker's sharper and smaller knives with the ethanol solution. He sighed before addressing the henchclowns. "Don't get excited or trigger-happy, but that wound needs to be drained so I need to cut it open. Those stiches aren't helping and there's good chance that they are what introduced the infection in the first place."

The leader gave sharp looks to the others before giving Crane the go-ahead. The doctor paused. He was being coerced into performing emergency surgery, on a maniacal clown, at an hour of the night that was probably more accurately described as morning. Naturally, he decided to spread misery around as much as possible. "You two," he began, pointing out a couple of the thugs, "hold him down in case he wakes up part-way through."

The goons took up their positions silently. Their hands hovered for a moment, clearly demonstrating their unwillingness to follow the order. Crane glared at them and waited for them to comply. One of them swallowed, but they tentatively grabbed the Joker's upper arms and pinned him down. One of them shook slightly and Crane took a moment to savour the fear response.

The doctor also took a moment to silently wish for a scalpel that would allow for genuine precision. Working with a knife for wound treatment was tantamount to cutting vegetables with a machete. Despite this, his grip was steady and he worked quickly and efficiently, draining the pus from the infection site until it bled cleanly. In the end, some of the infected, necrotic flesh had to be removed. In a proper hospital setting Crane would have prescribed antibiotics. Here, he removed enough tissue to be safe.

He washed the site with boiling water and sent the nervous henchclown to retrieve the first aid kit from the bathroom. Crane considered the option of heating another of the Joker's knives and cauterizing the wound. However, the Joker had been gracious enough to remain mostly unconscious for the procedure, with only a few giggles leaking from him when Crane had applied the first cuts. Crane did not want to jolt a fevered, possibly delirious Joker awake if he could avoid it. Additionally, cauterisation would have been more about revenge for being bothered, rather than for medical reasons, and he was above such petty practices. Also he didn't particularly want the smell of burnt meat floating around the apartment for the next day or so. Instead, bandages from the kit were wrapped securely around the wound. The towels had been used to catch any fluids that leaked from the wound during the process. Crane resolved to burn them afterwards. He grabbed the paracetamol from the kit and handed it to the leader.

"Alright, I've done what I can about the infection site. Now the fever needs to be brought down. Get him to drink, if you can, and when he wakes up, give him the paracetamol. Otherwise, try and keep him cool. There's ice in the freezer and you can use the clean towel. I'd also suggest removing the greasepaint if you think he wouldn't kill you for it. Then, in the morning, you're going to answer some questions for me," Crane explained. The lead thug had the audacity to look relieved.

Crane headed toward his bedroom for some much needed sleep. Before he had gone two steps, Scarecrow seized control and turned back around. "If any of you morons so much as touch something that looks even vaguely science-y, I'll dose you with toxin and watch you writhe on the ground and tear at your own flesh as you scream yourselves to death," he uttered in one long breath.

The nervous one whimpered and the rest of the thugs looked disconcerted. After spending any significant amount of time with the Joker, they learnt to recognise honest threats, no matter how over-the-top. Scarecrow slammed the bedroom door and even the lead thug jumped.

~X~

Crane awoke to a soft knock at his bedroom door. He rubbed at his eyes and retrieved his glasses off the bedside table. He arose with a sigh, and only when he had made himself presentable, did he deign to open the door. As expected, the head henchclown was waiting on the other side of the threshold.

"How's our 'patient' doing?" Crane asked in a wry tone. After sleeping on the matter, he decided that keeping the Joker alive might not be such a bad thing. Not only did they share a common enemy, but having access to the Joker's unique mind would be an unparalleled opportunity. He was an undeniably fascinating individual and the notion of dissecting the Joker's mind held a strong appeal to the ex-psychiatrist. If the clown was impaired and more talkative due to his illness, so much the better.

"Stable, but still unconscious. We managed to get him to drink some cold water, but he isn't lucid enough to take any drugs yet."

"Fine. Let's get back to the living room so that you can answer some more pressing questions."

The lead thug nodded and fell into step beside Crane. A glance around the room suggested that the henchclowns had set up camp around their boss and had at least tried to keep the mess to a minimum. Crane sighed. He would never take solitude for granted ever again.

"So how did you find me and why do you care about what happens to the Joker? He cannot possibly be an amicable employer," Crane began.

During the discussion Crane discovered that the Joker kept tabs on various 'important individuals' and that he was 'fortunate' enough to fall under this heading. There were no back-alley doctors that the Joker trusted, but apparently Crane was considered alright out of some sense of 'super-criminal solidarity'. The doctor had never heard of anything so ridiculous. He fully intended to question the Joker about his motivations later.

The lead thug had been briefed on these things a while back and had organised the transport. His motivation was mildly interesting because of the fear element. Apparently he had seen the Joker recover from much worse. He was under the impression that not helping was too great a risk to his personal safety, should the Joker recover unaided. The clown had gained a legendary status amongst his lackeys that even outstripped his reputation in the rest of Gotham.

"I don't suppose you can all just leave, now that I've patched him up?" Crane asked. The opportunity to analyse the Joker aside, Crane would always choose his privacy first.

"You're the doctor. Do you think it's safe to move him?"

"Would it make any difference whatsoever if I said 'yes'?"

The lead thug just smiled.

Crane sighed wearily. The clown had better recover quickly or Crane would let Scarecrow have his wish and simply dose the lot of them.


	2. Chapter 2

Crane approached his couch warily. Standard procedure, even outside of a formal setting, demanded that he check up on his apparent patient. The henchclowns had removed the greasepaint, but the Joker was still paler than he should have been. The lead thug came to stand at Crane's shoulder though he maintained a respectful distance.

"He's not well, but not too bad either, considering," Crane mused out loud. He turned to the lead henchclown. "You mentioned that he tends to recover rapidly?"

"Yeah, you should see some of the Bat-inflicted injuries he manages to recover from. Even fractures don't keep him down for long. I think it was the infection that finally got to him. Even when he was sewing his arm up, he didn't say a word. He just giggled a bit and kept smiling. He seemed to find it funny," the thug explained.

"I know you told me not ask, but the knife gash, how did he—" Crane began.

"Well it's like, well you know how you're not supposed to run with _scissors_…" the thug trailed off into self-conscious silence.

Crane gave him a measured look. "I see. The startling thing is that I'm not really surprised at all. Don't disturb me unless there is a change in his condition." With that, he went to his room to read in a vain attempt to recapture a sense of solitude.

Only an hour after he had sequestered himself, Crane was interrupted by the nervous henchclown. He shot a speculative look toward the draw containing a small supply of toxin before dismissing the notion. He went to the door instead.

"What now?" Crane snapped. He was gratified by the way the henchclown flinched.

"He's awake."

Crane gave no outward reaction to the news. He walked calmly toward the couch. The Joker was indeed awake. His eyes were still a little too bright and his colour wasn't great. However, he was wearing a huge grin to complement his involuntary one and he seemed to have broken the fever. Such a recovery rate was astounding.

The clown was half sitting and half sprawling on the couch. His gaze flickered rapidly around the room, noting details, before settling on the bandage around his arm. His hands fiddled with the old blanket that was tangled about his legs. Occasionally he'd poke at his bound wound and giggle to himself.

Crane stood still as he observed. It would be hard to distinguish a delirious Joker from one that was acting in his usual manner. The clown did not seem at all bothered by the unfamiliar environment or the fact that he was half dressed. The wary presence of his henchclowns probably contributed to this. After a moment, Crane broke the silence and addressed his patient.

"Joker."

"Scarecrow."

There was a pause. "How are you feeling?" Crane asked, falling back on accepted procedure.

"Super-duper, doc. I hope the boys haven't been too much of a hassle," the Joker smirked.

There were many questions Crane wanted to ask, ranging from the practical, 'Why me? Why here, considering that you've never actually met me before this?' to the more psychologically interrogative. Conversation had never been a strength of his.

"'The boys' haven't been disruptive to their full capacity, but I can't say their presence has been welcome." Tact was not one of his strengths either. Apparently the Joker found this amusing.

The clown raised his voice to address the other individuals in the room. "It seems you've overstayed your welcome, boys. Whoever has my coat can hand it over and the rest of you can scram. I'm sure the doc has better things to do than look after you lot."

The lead henchclown handed over the Joker's shirt and coat and stepped back quickly. It hadn't been necessary to tear the cloth to get at the wound, which in hindsight was probably a very good thing. The Joker fished around in the pockets with practiced ease and withdrew some small tubs of greasepaint. His smile widened.

The henchclowns filed out wordlessly, a couple of them throwing looks over their shoulders at their boss. The lead one had the audacity to give Crane a warning look as if he was the one who had just acquired a coat's worth of knives.

"You aren't leaving with them?" Crane asked the Joker pointedly.

"Nope. You know as well as I do that I'm not fit for proper travel."

Crane decided that if the Joker was well enough to be ordering goons around and restoring his makeup, he was probably well enough to travel—not that Crane was about to press the point without a key advantage. However, he did spare a moment to wonder if dosing the Joker with fear toxin was worth the risk if something went wrong. Scarecrow was quick to point out that he'd be willing to do it, regardless of risk factors. Crane ignored the suggestion.

The doctor remained quiet as the Joker re-applied his paints. When the clown was finished, Crane asked his first question. It was reasonable to think that the clown would be more likely to talk without his thugs hanging around like stray puppies.

"Tell me, why did your thugs bring you here? Surely there are more sensible places they could have brought you to recover. I am not known for my adherence to the Hippocratic Oath."

"True, and there're a couple of reasons. I know that unlike some back-alley doctors who would wet their pants at the sight of me, you'd never be tempted to call the cops. You have more to lose than any of those petty criminals. Also, I've always wanted to meet my predecessor. You were the first costumed villain in this city and with the vagueness of events… you might even have predated Batman."

The Joker's expression twitched in an odd way as he mentioned his archrival and the gleam in his eyes was almost impossible to categorise. Crane noted this and filed away the interesting response. One day, he'd have to ask the Joker about his opinion regarding the vigilante.

"Did you actually tell your thugs to bring you here in the event of your incapacitation?"

The Joker snorted. "Oh yeah, I sit around for days and days, working out every e_vent_uality and explaining contingency plans to the boys. That's how I like to spend my time."

"Touché. But if you didn't tell them to, why did they bring you here?"

The Joker shrugged. "They're good at being adaptable, at least the ones that manage to stay alive are. One of them probably remembered my ah, _distaste_ for most doctors and decided that you'd be a safe bet. I make sure that a few of them know some of my contacts. It's also fun to tell some of them one thing and the others something contradictory. I guess it's just lucky that one of the competent ones was in charge."

"'Lucky'? You could easily be dead, or in Arkham by now, if they'd taken you elsewhere."

The Joker shrugged again. "Maybe. Who knows what's going to happen next? I could still end up dead tomorrow, for all I know. Part of what makes life fun is the unpredictability. There's no good reason to obsess about control, you gotta just let stuff _happen_. That's why I don't sit around thinking about 'what if' and 'might'. It's useless because life likes messing up neat little plans. Life is messy, but more importantly life is _chaos_."

Crane had never heard something so absurd or irresponsible. It was true that all things tended toward entropy. It was basic thermal dynamics. But humans had the ability to impose order and fight against entropy. Surely no one could live without making some sort of rudimentary plan? The idea of being shoved around by the whimsical currents of probability was entirely unappealing to the doctor. However, he remained silent. If his professional experience of psychiatry had taught him anything (apart from that his contempt for humanity was a well-founded conclusion), it was not to argue with the lunatic about irrelevant points. That way madness lay.

~X~

The relief that Crane felt at having his apartment comparatively empty, was short lived. Ignoring the Joker's presence until he had some idea of how to deal with him was Crane's first instinct. This meant that Crane decided to have an early night. He felt only vaguely apprehensive about leaving the Joker to his own devices. The clown was still recovering from the infection and he seemed quiescent for the most part.

There was no television in Crane's current residence, a fact the Joker had bemoaned, but there was enough reading material to keep anyone occupied for at least a few months. Besides, he should be sleeping to give his body a chance to recover and Crane had advised that course of action.

Unfortunately for the doctor, the Joker was not known for doing things which were logical or advised. He did in fact pride himself on his chaotic behaviour and, as a few unfortunate individuals could attest, his ability to be pathologically annoying. Crane shouldn't have been surprised, not really, but when he awoke to find the Joker's face mere centimetres from his own, he let out a rather undignified squawk and promptly fell out of bed.

From his position on the floor, Crane heard the distinct sound of giggling that quickly became full blown laughter. Scarecrow's growling from the back of his mind made an interesting counter-point to the unwelcome sound. Gathering as much dignity as possible, Crane rose stiffly from the floor and went out toward the kitchen. He resisted the impulse to slam the door and instead closed in a pointedly calm manner. The laughter from the bedroom only increased.

Throughout the day, the Joker seemed to be relatively dormant. Apparently he could behave in a civilised fashion if he so chose. There were no further incidences of irrational behaviour, and Crane was similarly trying to avoid provoking the madman. Neither of them mentioned the Joker's morning antics.

That next night, he let the Joker have the damn bed and Crane took the couch himself. He wasn't pleased, but sleeping on the couch was a small price to pay for sleeping alone. The next morning when had woken, he was even less pleased. He wasn't quite sure how the maniac had managed to 'share' the couch space without waking him, though it served to highlight the Joker's maddening resourcefulness. At least a part of him had expected this so that his reaction was rather more angry than undignified. Crane spent the day acquiring a lock and fitting to the bedroom door.

Crane took his room back that night. He left the Joker sleeping on the couch, crept to his room and was careful to use the lock. The next morning he wasn't really surprised when he woke up next to the Joker, with no evidence to suggest that lock had been tampered with. It was plainly typical behaviour that was clearly intended to drive him insane.

After three nights of waking up with company, Crane was on the verge of sleeping on the floor. However, he suspected that even that would not deter the Joker from his nightly attempt to push Crane over the edge. Granted, discussing the issue in bed was probably not the best location, but the bed was his territory and he was not about to back down. So he decided to bring the matter up as tactfully as he could.

"Are you trying to make things as unpleasant as possible in the mornings or was it just a happy accident?" Well, it was tactful by Crane's usual standards.

Crane continued to rage when the Joker's only response was to give him an amused look. "Perhaps you just can't stand to be alone for any length of time and find the need to—" Crane paused. He regarded the Joker more careful, his gaze searching for meaning in the clown's expression. When he spoke next, his voice had taken on a more coaxing and analytic tone.

"That's it, isn't it? You don't like being alone. This wasn't a calculated attempt to irritate me." Crane had definitely slipped into his psychiatrist's voice, albeit unconsciously, but his next question held an odd edge of intensity. "Does it frighten you to be alone?"

At this, the Joker finally reacted to Crane's interrogation. His smile was anything but cheerful. "Careful there, doc. If you think this is the most unpleasant thing I could do to your mornings, then you are seriously lacking in imagination."

Crane nodded absently. He was mostly oblivious to the threat, as thoughts were streaking through his mind with their customary speed and efficiency. The Joker needed an audience by his very nature. Normal people needed others around in order to remind them that they were human and to help them be human. A human in isolation could quickly lose their grip on their own humanity and certainly on their sanity.

The Joker, on the other hand, approached the same conclusion from the opposite direction. He needed to be around people to remember that he _wasn't_ like them. He needed to be reminded of humanity in order to remember how to avoid it. The Joker—not as an individual, but as an entity or symbol—couldn't exist in a vacuum or without the people that he necessarily mirrored and warped. The Joker, without others around him, would cease to exist. No wonder he sought out Crane's company. It made Crane consider why he had dismissed his henchclowns. However, the interest of solving that minor puzzle paled in comparison to the idea that someone as psychopathic as the Joker was capable of feeling fear. That most certainly required further investigation.


	3. Chapter 3

It was the first morning that Crane had given up on solitary sleep after trying every reasonable measure to preserve it. He awoke and took a moment to savour the relative calm. It was fairly early and the source of unparalleled irritation was still asleep. Crane blinked a few times and retrieved his glasses. At this point he also noted, in a detached sort of way, that he was aroused. It was an inevitable, if somewhat inconvenient bi-product of his anatomy.

When this situation occurred, his usual response was to ignore it or let Scarecrow deal with it. In a way that was difficult to articulate, Crane considered that the greatest level of power was achieved by the individual who needed nothing from those around him. Crane had no desire to end up panting and sweating, or sprawled across a bed or partner, like some primitive creature. Physical intimacy, or intimacy of any kind, had never really appealed to Doctor Crane, outside of some isolated and unwelcome incidents during puberty.

The very last thing he wanted was to let the man beside him realise the state he was in. Crane wasn't sure how that situation would resolve itself, but he _was_ sure that it would not end well. It was likely that copious mocking would be involved. Luckily, the Joker appeared to be in the process of shaking off the after-effects of deep sleep.

"If you will excuse me," Crane murmured dryly as he extricated himself from the bed sheets and padded toward the bathroom. He was fastidious by nature, but Scarecrow's clamouring from the back of his mind was the main reason he wished to shower. Apparently this was not an incident where he would ignore the weakness of his physiology until it went away.

Crane did not object to Scarecrow's solution to the anatomical problem, per se. It tended to increase his endorphin levels for some time afterwards and his ability to concentrate also improved. As long as Jonathan didn't have to deal with the problem directly, it was really a mutually satisfactory solution with absolutely no pun intended. Ever.

Crane retained control as he stripped down, so that he could fold his garments. Scarecrow tended to simply scatter clothes about the room when he undressed. The doctor had bared himself from the waist up when he was interrupted by a familiar and unwelcome presence standing behind him. He was certain he had locked the door.

Under more ordinary circumstances Crane may have perceived the symmetry in his state of undress. Only days ago, the Joker had been bare in a similar manner. It may even have occurred to Crane that this was some sort of payback, perhaps without an overly malicious intent, but as more of an equalisation of the playing-field. Of course, 'equalisation' was a very relative term when dealing with the Joker. Crane may even have recalled that apart from some loneliness-induced antics, the Joker had so far demonstrated the ability to behave in a semi-civilised fashion if it suited him. However, these were hardly ordinary circumstances and Crane's rational thought processes were drowned out by a flood of indignation.

"What the hell do you—" Crane nearly snarled. He was about to turn around and face the maniac, but he froze instead. The Joker had stepped forward and a knife had appeared in Crane's peripheral vision. The primitive stimulus evoked the ancient instinct of the fight-or-flight response. In most people this triggered the activation of the sympathetic nervous system, the release of adrenalin and accessory endocrine factors. In Crane, there was a rather more specialised response.

The Joker noticed the subtle difference in the way the doctor held himself. The set of his shoulders relaxed, but at the same time he seemed on the edge of attack. It was the tension of a crossbow string: taut, but steady.

"I think I know what you're doing," Scarecrow remarked. The inflection in the tone was also subtly different. It was more conversational, but still touched by something predatory. The syntax was less formal too.

The Joker wondered exactly what was going on. He had an idea, but he'd prefer to spring his theory on the doc, ah, _Scarecrow_—whichever—when it would be unexpected. The stark change was surprising, but the Joker was nothing if not adaptable. He barely missed a beat before he replied, "you do, huh?"

"Mhmm. I definitely appreciate fear for fear's own sake, but I'm curious about what you think causing a fear response will achieve."

The Joker's blade skittered down from cheek to collarbone without piercing skin. The corresponding shiver from Scarecrow was only loosely based on apprehension. He knew very well what a good fear response could do to him.

"You know, if Arkham's psychopathy diagnosis of me is right, then I'm not really afraid. I wouldn't have the right sense of consequence," Scarecrow continued in the same conversational manner.

The blade travelled just left of the sternum so that it rested above Scarecrow's elevated heartbeat.

"Then again, I also know you have absolutely no issue with killing me and self-preservation is common to all except the most… unique individuals." Even Scarecrow avoided phrases like 'deranged psychopaths' when one of them was holding a knife flush against his ribcage. "I guess the fear response is inevitable," he concluded.

The knife moved left again and this time it was hovering over his spleen. Scarecrow had neither the patience nor the inclination to learn as much about physiology as Jonathan, but he knew that a ruptured spleen could cause him to bleed out internally in less than a minute. Fear was exciting and something that Scarecrow seldom experienced himself.

"I figured you'd enjoy a bit of a fright." The words themselves were light and flippant, but the Joker's tone was flat and dark in a way that made Scarecrow shiver again.

"You noticed my compromising state this morning, then?"

"Uh-huh, so what is it that you want, Scarecrow?" the Joker asked. His breath stirred the tiny hairs at the back of Scarecrow's neck.

"Oh, lots of things," he replied evasively. "Nothing that you'd be interested in."

The Joker waited for Scarecrow to elaborate.

"I want power and fear. I want to hear screams of terror. I want to bring Gotham to its knees. But right now, most of all, I want to see _you_ writhing under the influence of fear toxin." Of course Scarecrow wasn't going to mention his protective desire to keep Jonathan safe and reveal his presence. One did not reveal information that could be used to advantage, especially not to grinning psychopaths. Besides, at that moment there wasn't a lot the Scarecrow wouldn't have given to see the effects of the toxin on the Joker. Crane agreed completely, though his reasoning ran in a completely different direction.

After this mildly threatening confession, Scarecrow fully expected to feel the cool bite of the knife on his unprotected skin. He was completely taken aback when he received the simple reply of, "that could be arranged."

Heedless of the sharp edge of the knife, Scarecrow spun around to face the madman. Crane's interest was sparked as surely as his counterpart's. For a moment the doctor appeared to be lurking behind blue eyes before Scarecrow reasserted his control. Science was fine in moderation, but this was not an opportunity to be taken lightly.

"What are you playing at?" Scarecrow demanded.

The Joker's eyes slid up and down the lithe form before him. "It's simple, you have something I want and, ah, a _light_ dose might be fun. Even if it only kills the boredom for an afternoon, it would be worth it."

'Low threshold of tolerance for boredom coupled with an easily distracted mindset,' Crane noted. He was feeling much calmer when he didn't have to participate directly.

"I don't buy it, Joker," Scarecrow stated. "Not to give you ideas, but if there's something you wanted from me; I would have thought you'd simply take it, without bothering to play my games."

The Joker shook his head. "Nope, I like games. It's more fun this way," he explained. "It's always about the fun. It's the only reason I do anything—that, and proving a point."

Scarecrow nodded slowly. He wasn't going to argue with the madman. It was hardly a productive way to spend time.

"So a 'light dose' of fear toxin and you want… what exactly?"

Scarecrow had a fairly clear idea about what the Joker wanted but—

Crane could not imagine the Joker being interested in physical gratification with anyone, let alone with him. There was his fascinating obsession with the Batman, of course, but that seemed to transcend normal human standards. It was also difficult to see how that unhealthy co-dependant relationship could possibly end well.

No, the only reason the Joker would be interested in such activities was for a reason entirely separate from the physical. Trying to find the true motivation behind the Joker's actions was a step toward understanding the remarkable individual himself. Crane could not escape his psychiatrist's instincts and a part of him literally _needed_ to analyse, categorise and understand.

"This is about proving a point, then?" Crane asked. With his curiosity piqued and the initial shock of the Joker's interruption fading, the doctor was gradually relaxing into a more grounded state. There was a split-second's hesitation as the Joker noted the change in demeanour. It confirmed his suspicions regarding the doctor.

"Something like that," the Joker replied. "It would be funny seeing you all hot and bothered—if you're capable of giving up that perfect control, that is."

Doctor Crane was not. He doubted that he'd be able to talk Scarecrow around either. The prize on the other hand… he would be able to be able to dose the Joker without reprisal. To begin to explore the fears buried deep in that fractured mind was an extremely tempting prospect. It was even a simple matter of wanting to know that his toxin _worked_ on the unique brain-chemistry of the individual before him. The most basic instincts of the scientific mind were an enquiring attitude and a burning curiosity. The Joker had him trapped and the damn clown knew it.

Crane summoned up every skerrick of dignity that his lack of attire permitted and fixed the Joker with his best detached, politely interested, psychiatrist expression. "At the risk of repeating myself, what exactly do you want in exchange?"

The Joker's grin widened. "Firstly, who's asking?"

That question threw Crane for a moment. The Joker addressed him as 'doc' or 'Scarecrow' and never by name. Crane had assumed that he was either being facetious or in his own twisted way, attempting to be polite. Surely the Joker hadn't made the distinction between himself and Scarecrow. It was especially unlikely considering that this was the first time the clown had even encountered the other part of Crane's self. None of the psychiatrists at Arkham had been able to pick the change, though that wasn't saying much.

Crane knew the differences were subtle. After all, it wasn't dissociative identity disorder or anything overly marked like that. Crane had always been aware of Scarecrow and visa versa. Scarecrow's existence had manifested as an internal monologue for most of Crane's life. He had spoken with the voice of Crane's id, under Freud's model, or a mixture of the appetitive and spirited parts of his personality, if Plato's tripartite model was to be accepted.

It was only when the doctor had begun experimenting with fear toxin that things had changed. Crane had experienced his own toxin voluntarily, albeit in varyingly mild doses, during the developing process. He needed to know the effects and throughout history unappreciated scientists had often found it necessary to experiment upon themselves at one point or another. Were someone to draw a parallel between him and the fictional Dr. Jekyll, Crane would scoff. However, the principal of being one's own test subject held some truth.

He wasn't sure how his experiments with fear toxin had prompted Scarecrow's genuine emergence. He would need years of research to understand the interaction between the compound and his own brain chemistry. There was also the possibility that it was more of a psychosomatic effect. Either way, no amount of sitting and reflecting had provided an appropriate categorisation. Crane simply accepted that he was beyond the scope of ordinary humanity. He was pleased to have Scarecrow around. Crane did not care for the presence of others and valued solitude highly. However he did value Scarecrow's presence with something akin to sentimentality, if he were capable of such emotive nonsense. He also accepted that the aspects of his personality that Scarecrow embodied were necessary to his goals.

"What do you mean 'who's asking'?" Crane hazarded.

The Joker snickered. "You or Scarecrow."

Crane blinked. How in the world did the clown possess such uncanny insight? Crane decided not to show how disconcerted he was. "If you know who I am at any given moment, then you know who's asking you what," he stated flatly. He wasn't in the mood for these sorts of games. Or any games, for that matter.

"True, but that's not what I mean."

One could almost see the wheels turning in Crane's head. "Then _who_ is it that you want, exactly?"

The Joker tapped the knife against his lips, an exaggerated look of concentration on his face. Crane's pulse quickened as he silently hoped that the Joker wanted to play with Scarecrow and leave him out of the whole sordid matter.

_Gee, thanks,_ came a wry voice from within.

'Oh, be quiet Mr I-appreciate-fear-for-fear's-own-sake. This is partially your fault for encouraging him,' Crane replied testily. 'Besides, I would have thought you'd enjoy this sort of thing.'

_Physical gratification, yes, highly enjoyable. Surrendering power to this masochistic lunatic: not so fun._

'Wait a moment, what do you mean?' Crane asked, intrigued.

_Oh come on, you're the psychiatrist. Surely you'd noticed the way he was giggling when you were cutting out the infection. He wasn't even fully conscious at the time. Plus he giggles when he gets hurt and the way he responds to the Batman, well, there's definitely something going on there._

'But masochism? Surely with the Bat it's more about the enjoyment on a psychological level. He would enjoy brining his rival closer to the breaking point and proving his little theories about humanity. The wound-treating thing is probably his way of dealing with something that reminds him he's human. Responding to pain normally would not be his style.'

_You over-analyse things. I think you're creating profundity where there is none. I think he simply enjoys the pain._

Crane brooded over Scarecrow's supposed insight. It wasn't the first time he had been accused of being over-analytical, but he was inclined to give the accusation more weight when it was coming from himself. Crane was brought out of his musings when the Joker finally spoke. "You two are basically the same person and just different aspects of yourself, right?"

It was an oversimplification, but Crane nodded, unwilling to mock the Joker's crude summary.

"In that case, I don't really care who. You two can sort it out yourselves. But, I would think that it's only fair that whoever plays my game should be the one to dose me after."

"Possibly," Crane replied evasively, "but either way, it's going to be toxin first."

"What, don't you trust me?" the Joker whined in an unsuccessful attempt at playing innocent. The huge grin rather spoilt his efforts.

"Frankly, no. Besides, fun or not, you are more than capable of making me keep my end of the bargain, but the reverse is not the case."

"Fine, fine. But you're really paranoid, you know. You should work on those trust issues."

Crane gave him a glacial look. "Well, now that you've explained who, will you kindly tell me exactly what you want? I assure you that I'm just dying of anticipation."

The Joker snorted. "Alright, for a low dose of that toxin of yours… I want a kiss."


	4. Chapter 4

"What!" Crane exclaimed. "You can't be seri—I mean, you've got to be jok—," he trailed off with a frustrated sigh. Sometimes it was exceedingly difficult to talk to the Joker. In the back of his mind, Scarecrow was just as bemused. It was the last request either of them had expected. It briefly crossed Crane's mind that the clown was suggesting it purely to be unpredictable and irritating. If that were the case, it was working.

"So… you are willing to let me dose you with fear toxin in exchange for a kiss." Crane spoke slowly and carefully, in case speaking too quickly would cause the Joker to burst into laughter and demand something more…expected.

"Yeah, pretty much. Obviously the kiss has to be to my _exacting_ standards, but it'll just be a kiss."

_He's completely insane, _Scarecrow suggested unhelpfully.

'Yes, thank you doctor,' Crane snipped.

Scarecrow scowled. _So are you going to accept his stupid condition?_

'Are you?' Crane retorted.

There was a sense of Scarecrow shrugging, despite the lack of shoulders. _He does have a point about fairness. Whoever plays his game should be the one who gets to dose him._

'This is an extremely important opportunity to further the research and possibly gain an insight into this extraordinary individual. For the sake of science, I must be able to record notes and make observations.

_So _you'll_ kiss him then?_

Crane was silent.

_Come on, it'd be just like kissing a woman who's wearing too much lipstick._

'No it would _not_. And just _how_ is that supposed to help, anyway? I don't want to kiss anyone, regardless of extenuating circumstances like gender and level of makeup. I most certainly don't want to put my lips anywhere near that plague-pit he calls a mouth. Have you _seen_ the colour of his teeth?' Crane sneered.

_Fine, I'll do it, but I get to play with him once he's dosed. I want to hear him scream._

Crane wisely refrained from pointing out that a low dose was unlikely to get an individual as strong as the Joker to scream, unless his unique brain chemistry made him over-sensitive to the compound.

Crane hesitated for a moment. 'Fine. You can play with him, but do not disrupt the process too much, and give me peace to study the reaction. Research and knowledge are important above all other considerations, including your 'fun'.'

There was a pause. Scarecrow waited, knowing that Jonathan was going to name another condition.

'Also, I will deliver the injection.'

Scarecrow's non-expression twisted into something resembling a smirk. _Developing a sadist streak, are we?_ he asked.

'Most amusing, I'm sure,' Crane replied dryly. 'No, I simply want to make sure that the process is executed precisely and hygienically.'

Scarecrow smirked. _Whatever you say._

There were several reasons why Scarecrow accepted the relatively unequal deal. Firstly, he wasn't as fussed with cleanliness, so kissing the Joker seemed a relatively small price to pay. Also, he did care about Jonathan. It was his primary purpose for existing—well, that and the fear. Finally, he wanted to test a theory he had and he highly doubted that Jonathan would have the presence of mind or the inclination to pursue this particular experiment. Scarecrow could be interested in science too, albeit in a warped, pseudo-scientific kind of way.

Crane returned his focus to the external world. "I accept," he replied in measured tones.

The Joker grinned. "I thought you might."

"Indeed. Now will you kindly give me some privacy?" Crane snapped.

The Joker shrugged. "Sure thing, doc. No need to get your panties in a bunch."

Crane glared at the Joker's retreating back. After that he re-locked the door, more out of habit rather than any real hope that it could keep the Joker out. Crane had thought that after that little conversation he would at least be able to have an uninterrupted shower. However, as soon as he stepped under the spray, Scarecrow was there and Crane had little choice but to step back and try and ignore anatomical inevitability.

From a psychological perspective, he found Scarecrow's thoughts during the process rather interesting. Scarecrow speculated on the sound of the Joker's scream. There were images of the clown's soulless eyes glazed with terror, his breathing harsh and fearful. Crane was surprised at just how effective these notions where. It wasn't long before a languid and satisfied Scarecrow faded into the background and allowed the doctor to pursue proper hygiene. Had he been thinking more clearly, without the endorphin rush, Crane may have been disconcerted.

After his shower, Crane retrieved the equipment he would need to begin the experiment. This equipment consisted of varying concentrations of the raw toxin, distilled water for making up fine-tuned concentrations, disposable gloves and syringes, and his note book and pens. He kept these in his briefcase along with the aerosol version of his compound and one further, rather more specialised item.

Doctor Crane regarded his mask. He had decided that he would be using an intervenous method of delivery. The dosage could be more precise and the process would be more efficient. Technically this meant his mask would be unnecessary. Crane picked up the crudely stitched burlap and rubbed the material between his fingers. There was absolutely no practical reason to even take it into the living area.

Scarecrow was silent in the back of his mind. This usually happened when Crane was in close proximity to his mask, but not wearing it. Whether Scarecrow's silence was from anticipation or a recoil response from seeing his face, Crane was unsure. Scarecrow had never said and Crane had never asked. The mask delineated them in a way that few things did. They were one and same, basically, but the mask… complicated things. Crane placed the mask back in his briefcase. Maybe aerosols would be involved at one point. It was best to be prepared.

Crane took his briefcase into the living room. He found the Joker flipping through one of the psychology journals. The doctor raised an eyebrow. Was the clown actually reading the text?

"Have you found anything interesting?" Crane ventured.

"Yep, this graph, if you tilt it like this, almost looks bat-shaped."

Crane resisted the impulse to roll his eyes. Bat-shaped. Of course it was. Still, the obsession itself was interesting; he really needed to ask the Joker about the Bat. However, there were more pressing concerns right now.

"Getting back to dosing you with toxin, I trust restraints won't be necessary," Crane began.

"Restraints?" The Joker looked up, clearly amused by the notion. "This wouldn't happen to be a not-so-subtle way of trying to get out of your end of the bargain, would it?"

Crane sighed. "Oh yes, because it's obvious that you'd be completely helpless if you were restrained. I suppose it's just blind luck that they never thought of restraining you when you were back in Arkham. Otherwise, you'd still be there today."

The Joker chuckled. "Hey, I'm making a valid point." He put down the journal and leant forward, casting his eyes left and right before fixing his gaze on Crane. "In Arkham I know they won't try and kill me, at least not outright, and I have all the time I need to pick the right escape technique."

Crane gave him a measured look. "You actually think I'd try to kill you?"

The Joker shrugged and leant back. "It's a possibility. I know you have the capacity to kill and you're certainly not above trying to give me a lethal dose of your toxin purely for curiosity's sake. Still, I suppose you want to get inside me head and that's a reason you'd hold back." The Joker smirked. "That and your fear, I guess."

_Fear? _Scarecrow seethed. _I'll show him fear! I'll rip out his—_

Crane closed his eyes briefly.

"I'm guessing Scary didn't like that comment," Joker commented.

"In a manner of speaking." Crane spoke slightly louder than usual over the tirade in his head.

The Joker giggled. "So, uh, why would I need restraints?"

"Because I don't relish the prospect of you being hyper-sensitive to the toxin, going mad with fear and killing me for no better reason than your own hallucinations. It would be a pointless way to die."

"Hmm, well that's just a risk you'll have to take, doc."

Crane had expected as much. Such a severe response to the toxin would be statistically unlikely, the Joker's unusual chemistry aside. Even if events did unfold in that manner, both he and Scarecrow were more than capable of evading a hallucinating, deranged test subject. Fear, and especially their fear toxin, broke down and subdued. Even the most extreme test subjects had crumpled under the influence of his toxin. It was the nature of the chemical reaction.

"Very well, take a seat and we'll get started."

The Joker nodded and sat on a dingy chair in the living area. He shrugged off his coat, unbuttoned his cuff, and rolled up his sleeve to expose the outside of his upper arm. Crane eyed the patch of skin just below the shoulder disdainfully.

"I'm not giving you a 'flu shot. Hold out your forearm so that I can get at your median cubital vein."

The Joker gave him a blank look but held out his forearm.

"Median cubital vein," Crane explained, pointing to the crook of the Joker's elbow. "It connects the basilic and cephalic veins and an intravenous injection will allow for the quickest response time."

"Don't worry, doc. I know anatomy _intimately_," he leered, "and I know which vein you're talking about. Let's just say I've had a lot of _practical_ experience, but that I've never found the nomenclature important."

Crane looked up in surprise, startled by the use of the formal Latin-origin term. The Joker returned his look with an expression that clearly advised against underestimating him. Even with Crane's difficulties, and general disinterest, in reading expressions, the message was understood implicitly. Maybe the Joker hadn't just been looking for bat-shaped graphs in the psychology journal.

Crane cleared his throat and looked down at the arm. "How long has it been since you've washed your arm?" he asked disdainfully, in a deft change of topic.

The Joker shrugged, amused by the look of distaste on the ex-psychiatrist's face.

"For your sake, I hope your thugs didn't drink my 70% ethanol solution, or at least that they spared the antiseptic," Crane stated.

"There should be something antiseptic-y in your first aid kit. They're not allowed to mess with those sorts of supplies. There might be even some seventy percent ethanol lying around, though it would be in a bottle marked 'Vodka'."

Crane gave his grinning subject a withering look and went to retrieve the first aid kit. Luckily for the Joker, it hadn't been ransacked and contained some sterilising wipes that were individually sealed. It would be a shame for the Joker to drop dead from a second infection before Crane had had a chance to dissect that intriguing mind.

The doctor stepped back into the living area. The Joker was fiddling with the upholstery on the back of the chair and pulling out bits of foam. Apparently he was incapable of sitting still for two minutes. He turned around and proffered his arm again with a grin when he caught sight of Crane.

The doctor gave him a measured look before professionalism took over. "The vein is already fairly prominent, so I am not going to bother with a tourniquet," he announced. With surprising dexterity, Crane opened one of the wipes and swiped it across the target vein. His movements were graceful and assured. They were still full of that tight control, but the grace made him seem almost relaxed. Apparently 'doctor mode' was good for the ex-psychiatrist. The clown filed away the interesting information. He was watching Crane's face rather than the chosen injection site.

There was a glint of something unexpected, something off, lurking just behind the doctor's eyes. It wasn't something that was purely analytical and reserved. Scarecrow might be the embodiment of the really wild bits of Crane's personality, but there was strong overlap. The doctor had his own _proclivities_. He possessed a casual cruelty that went beyond a simple disregard for others. The interest in fear above other considerations was a bit of a giveaway.

What the Joker read in Crane's face as the injection site was sterilised, was not Scarecrow, but something just as dangerous. The Joker enjoyed seeing people in this way. It was novel to see another monster that existed without his help. So often, people needed to be coaxed to reveal themselves. With the doctor, it was written all across his face. Though in the Joker's experience, not everyone was capable of reading the obvious.

Perhaps part of it was Scarecrow getting impatient, but the boundaries between the two sides of Crane seemed pretty blurred. The Joker was not into labelling and categorisation, but he was certainly intrigued by the doctor's little 'situation'.

Crane picked up a syringe and drew a small measure of clear liquid toxin from a cryptically labelled vessel. "This is a very mild dose. The molarity is less than one." The doctor did not take his eyes off the fluid level as he spoke and so appeared to be addressing the hypodermic needle. He turned back to his subject when he had drawn up the correct amount.

The Joker's gaze switched from the doctor's face to his own vein network as the needle was placed against his skin. Most people avoided watching an injection site in case they tensed up and caused themselves pain. The Joker watched with unabashed interest and a slight level of anticipation. He giggled softly as the needle slid through his skin and pierced a vein. Crane's hand was rock steady and the Joker barely felt the prick of the needle.

He'd say this for Crane, the man was precise. At Arkham, the nurses' hands would always shake when they gave him an injection and sometimes they missed the spot entirely. They got so scared whenever they missed and it went in a sort of vicious cycle. They also weren't nearly as meticulous as Crane, so the Joker always felt Arkham injections with a painful clarity. It wasn't that he minded the pain. It was often the most entertaining thing that happened at Arkham, but it _was_ unprofessional.

Crane carefully stowed away the syringe for proper disposal. Scarecrow was getting restless. Crane's hand twitched toward the mask. He hesitated for a fraction of a second and flipped open his notebook instead. He didn't pick up a pen and instead reached for his mask again. Intervenous delivery or not, some things were important beyond practical considerations. He picked up the mask and put it on. Scarecrow grinned and slid closer to his subject. This was going to be fun.

'Pupils dilated, breathing elevated, please check his pulse, Scarecrow,' Crane droned in the back of Scarecrow's mind.

"Are you hallucinating?" Scarecrow demanded of the Joker, ignoring Crane's request. "Do you feel fear crawling through your system? You _will_ scream."

'His pulse, Scarecrow.'

_Fine, _Scarecrow all but snarled. He seized the Joker's wrist and laid two fingers over the radial artery. The Joker's eyes had been slightly glazed, but in an unfocused sort of way rather than one indicative of fear. Otherwise, his only reaction had been stillness. The lack of movement was disconcerting and only noticeable by its absence. Under normal circumstances, the Joker was a force of hyperactivity, seemingly incapable of remaining still for any length of time.

When he felt the Scarecrow's fingers against his wrist, the Joker's reaction was instantaneous. His gaze snapped toward the point of contact at his wrist and his breath hitched. A low growl emanated from the back of his throat, but his wrist shook slightly. Whether this was from tension or a genuine shiver, it was impossible to say. Scarecrow peered into his subject's eyes, searching for fear or at least trying to capture his gaze. The Joker's reaction to the toxin was odd.

"Tell me what you see," Scarecrow breathed, his tone all the more unsettling for its apparent gentleness. Scarecrow increased the pressure across the Joker's wrist to see what would happen, overriding Crane's warning in that back of his head.

The Joker's wrist remained still at this point. He was looking back at Scarecrow, but it was hard to tell if his sight was actually focused. Then a sudden trickle of laughter broke the relative silence. The sound sparked rage in Scarecrow. How dare this clown laugh in the face of fear! The Joker jerked his wrist back and his gaze flicked rapidly around the room. When it finally settled back on Scarecrow, his eyes were clear and focused. The Joker's breathing was still harsh, but his smile was broad.

The villains stared at one another for a moment. There was a strange sense of truce or unity hanging insubstantially in the air. They might have been seizing up one another if either of them were in their usual state of mind. As it was, the only thing that marked the passage of time was the slowing of breath. The Joker wasn't the only one with an elevated breathing rate.

The Joker finally spoke. "Well, that was… different."

Scarecrow scowled. "That was nothing. You need a stronger dose."

The Joker's grin became a smirk. "Maybe. But right now, it's my turn." The unconscious swipe of his tongue only served to emphasis his point.

Scarecrow removed his mask slowly and deliberately before placing it carefully back in the briefcase. "Fine. Your turn."


	5. Chapter 5

The Joker tilted his head to the side to regard Scarecrow and then the mask lying in the briefcase. "So you're sticking around. The doc doesn't want to play." The Joker seemed to consider this. He was smiling, but his expression was intent. Scarecrow remained silent. He had his own agenda and for now he was content to let the Joker think it really was his turn.

The clown stood up, not the least bit unsteady, and took a couple of steps into Scarecrow's personal space. His eyes flicked over to the mask one more time. "So, Scarecrow, how do you feel without your face?"

Scarecrow didn't budge, despite the Joker's proximity. Instead, his eyes roved over the clown's painted visage. The greasepaint was a little smeared with sweat (fear sweat?) and the red had spread into the cracks around the scar tissue. The Joker's face was a statement and all the more compelling for the haphazard way it was applied.

"How does it feel when you're not wearing yours?" Scarecrow retorted.

The Joker's smile broadened. "Oh, you're fun."

Scarecrow just scowled. "So go ahead, Joker, get on with your stupid game."

"Hey, I didn't complain about your game. Just for that, you're going to have to kiss me."

What? Was that even supposed to make a difference? The sheer absurdity of the situation lingered like a headache. Neither Crane nor Scarecrow knew what the Joker's aims were. He was the personification of unpredictable and irritating behaviour. He was also the personification of fiery destruction and mass slaughter, of course. But it was harder to remember those things when he was standing there with an insufferable smirk, demanding a kiss.

However, while Crane was more inclined to analyse, Scarecrow didn't give it as much thought. Understanding wasn't important to him. What was important was winning. It didn't matter that he had no idea what the game was or that the notion of 'rules' in a game against the Joker was ludicrous. He would win. Granted, Scarecrow didn't really know what he was doing, but it was unlikely that Joker was any less ignorant of this area of human interaction. Despite this, the Joker appeared relatively relaxed. It may have been the clown's own stupid idea, but such calmness was still enviable.

This time Scarecrow was the one to close the gap between them. He barely hesitated before placing a hand on the Joker's shoulder, close to the throat. Just in case. The Joker waited, his disconcerting smile never wavering. Scarecrow didn't close his eyes as he moved that final distance and brought their lips together. Stupid clown.

There was a brief instant where things balanced on the edge of potentiality. Scarecrow was mildly surprised to find that the body heat radiating off another's skin was not an entirely unpleasant sensation. He pressed forward a little harder. Whether involuntary or calculated, the Joker's tongue brushed against the interface between their lips. Scarecrow tensed, but he also recalled the little theory he wanted to test. He bit down on the Joker's bottom lip, not too hard, but just enough to cause a flare of pain.

The Joker's breathing pattern indicated that he was holding back laughter. He pressed forward, just slightly, against Scarecrow's teeth. Smirking to himself, Scarecrow bit harder. There was a sense of triumph when this elicited a purr from the Joker. In a characteristically incautious moment, Scarecrow brought his hand up from the Joker's shoulder to rest against his maimed face. He let his thumb trace scar tissue.

The Joker's hand was suddenly on the back of Scarecrow's neck. In some contexts, such a gesture could be intimate. Here it was a parody of intimacy. The gesture was only threatening and it set Scarecrow's teeth on edge. He considered simply letting his hand fall away from the side of the Joker's face. But that would be too easy and he wasn't going to back down without resistance. Scarecrow dragged his blunt nails along the Joker's jaw and down the side of his trachea. He also increased the pressure where his teeth were still digging into the Joker's lip. Both of them could detect the tang of blood.

The Joker's ragged nails bit into the muscle just beside Scarecrow's spine. Both villains were breathing heavily and while it would be difficult to describe the situation as passionate, it could most certainly be called intense.

Eye contact was maintained.

Scarecrow's eyes gave away nothing but determination and anger. The Joker's eyes held whatever he wanted them to. But behind any of the false emotion he displayed, there was always a dark insanity that even the most gifted psychiatrist would have trouble analysing.

Scarecrow tore himself out of the Joker's grip and drew back. The clown was smirking at him in a way that was entirely too knowing. There was bead of blood forming on his lip. He swiped at it with his tongue. Scarecrow found the gesture somewhat obscene.

Eye contact was maintained.

Then Scarecrow broke the silence. "That fills my end of the bargain."

It wasn't a question but the Joker nodded slowly. "I guess it does."

The silence stretched out again. The Joker turned away and pulled on his coat. Scarecrow fiddled with the briefcase. He didn't usually pack up, but he needed something to do. He snapped the case shut, trapping the mask inside. Crane was stalking around in the periphery of his consciousness and was as yet unwilling to be more than a token presence. Scarecrow turned to face the clown. The Joker was sitting and fiddling with one of his knives. It would be pointless to ask about his motives, but there was something that Scarecrow decided to remark on.

"So you _are_ a masochist."

The Joker didn't look up from his blade. "You too, huh?" he replied.

"What?"

"Well I expect the psychiatrist in you to try and fit me into a neat little human diagnosis, but I didn't think that was your thing."

Scarecrow tilted his head down and glared. "Well you are," he stated defensively.

The Joker giggled. "No I'm not, you are."

Scarecrow's eyes narrowed.

"This is the part where you say 'are too'," the Joker prompted between veritable fits of giggles.

Scarecrow was not going to participate in playground-antics. "You enjoyed it when I bit down on your lip."

"Uh-huh."

Scarecrow glared.

The Joker put his knife back somewhere in his coat and looked up. His expression was indecipherable. "If you can't work it out I'm not going to tell you because," here he cupped a hand beside his mouth before continuing in a conspiratorial stage-whisper, "that would be cheating."

"You enjoy being difficult, don't you?"

"You really like to know why things happen, don't you?" the Joker asked in a fair imitation of Scarecrow's manner.

Scarecrow glared, again. Then he picked up the briefcase and stalked toward the bedroom. He'd had enough of the clown's company. For now, Jonathan could occupy himself while Scarecrow brooded.

~X~

In addition to the basics of bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and a place to sit, Crane's temporary residence contained a study. Such a space was ordinarily a place for a desk, a computer and maybe a bookshelf. Instead, Crane had set up a makeshift laboratory. It contained all of his chemistry equipment; painstakingly labelled samples of various compound derivatives; experimental notes and anything else that had survived the police and Bat raids.

Crane always felt calm when he worked in his lab. Fear was literally at his fingertips and the whole specialised field was stretched out before him in scientific elegance. There was order, control and knowledge and these were all things that the doctor valued highly. The only thing that was vaguely comparable was the testing stage of his experimentation. However, that was compelling in a different fashion altogether. Crane would even admit (under duress, at least) that that particular interest was perhaps not strictly dispassionate.

The Joker had largely ignored the lab because Crane hadn't shown any interest in it during his stay. The doctor had been preoccupied, but also it didn't take a brilliant psychological deduction to realise that the Joker would be interested in anything he was denied access to or told to stay away from. So when Crane went to work in his lab to relax, he did so without preamble. There were toxins to modify, purify and concentrate.

Crane was not an exhibitionist like the Joker. He was perfectly content to stay out of the headlines. He dealt with the fractured, desperate elements of Gotham in places conveniently located outside of public scrutiny. The city was a Petri dish of dangerous, unstable growths. The drug trade had been gutted by Batman, but that only made it easier to encroach on old territory. Also, if Crane was careful (and he always was), he could even 'acquire' degenerate test subjects without rousing police interest. It wasn't the same as having the resources of Arkham at his disposal and the satisfaction of maintaining a flawless façade, but his research was progressing. At this point he also had access to the most fascinating subject he had ever experimented on. Though what he would demand in exchange for that access – it was best not to consider such things.

Crane was in the process of some psychopharmacological synthesis and modification when the Joker decided to bother him. Maybe it was loneliness, maybe it was calculated to annoy, but either way his presence barely registered with Crane. The ex-psychiatrist was heating a beaker containing a clear solution. There were a variety of other solutions and compounds arrayed on the bench-top before him. They were neatly arranged with clear, precise labels indicating their name and basic structure. The fluids were also marked with their concentrations.

The Joker sauntered up and surveyed the equipment. "What're you doing, doc?"

Ordinarily Crane would have replied with: "What I was doing before you and your thugs interrupted me." However, he was occupied with one of his favourite pastimes and being terse would have split his focus. The easiest thing to do was simply articulate what was running through his mind.

"I'm modifying a particular charged side-chain in order to make the compound more lipid-soluble. This will allow for a systemic effect with a rapid progression. Of course any altered effect will have to be empirically tested as I don't have the equipment to make this a rational alteration."

"_That_ sounds like fun." The Joker fidgeted for a moment before reaching out to grab a volumetric flask sitting just in front of Crane's right elbow. The doctor grabbed the offending wrist without taking his eyes off his beaker. The Joker waited a moment for Crane to realise just who's wrist he had grabbed. Several seconds later, Crane finally glanced up and seemed surprised to find himself holding the clown's wrist. He released it warily.

"Don't touch," Crane admonished, with just a hint of defensiveness in his tone.

The Joker just shrugged.

"Don't you have somewhere else to be?" Crane asked calmly. "You recovered from your infection days ago and I would expect you'd be eager to inflict yourself on the rest of Gotham." Crane paused for a moment as if considering his words. "I would think you would also be eager to go up against your foe again and coax him out of the shadows." The doctor looked directly into the Joker's eyes. He definitely had the clown's attention now. "The Batman, that is."

The Joker's expression instantly became unsettling in its intensity. Crane had never had such a sharp stare directed at him. The Joker usually seemed unfocused on the world around him, as if bored and detached from the details of his surroundings. Clearly his internal world held more interest for him. But now, even his eyes held something genuine in them, that for once was something beyond insanity. What it was _precisely_ was impossible for Crane to say, but the doctor was fascinated, almost despite himself.

The Joker blinked and Crane released a breath he hadn't realised that he'd been holding. Perhaps mentioning the Batman so directly hadn't been a great idea.

"I'm waiting," the Joker explained.

"For what?"

"You know how Batsy had a little bit of a _disagreement_ with the cops. Well he's innocent, of course."

Crane nodded. He had expected as much. If the Bat had actually broken and killed those people, he wouldn't be skulking just under the radar during his crime-fighting. The result would be rather messier. He would likely be rampaging around the city and butchering in the name of justice. A man who dressed up to become a vigilante and went around beating up criminals for kicks was not a man who did things by half-measures. Crane had some rudimentary theories regarding Batman's mental state and the story about his so-called crimes did not gel with the other pieces of evidence. It was a shame. As careful as Crane was, life would still be easier if the Bat was gunned down in a bloody fire-fight with the police. It would be ironic, too. Crane liked irony.

"The details aren't important," the Joker continued, "but he took the blame so I wouldn't win." The Joker smiled and shook his head. "He's stubborn like that. Anyway, back in Arkham, I decided that this was a little opportunity. I like giving him a choice. Mostly it's the lesser of two evils. I want to see just how ugly a choice he's prepared to make because the alternative is even worse. Right now he's out there because he needs to give the cops someone to chase, something to feed the myth. He also knows that I'm out here.

"The reason I'm keeping quiet is because I want to know what he'll do. It's almost impossible for him to find me if I don't want to be found. He certainly can't do it with the cops chasing him and his allies all turned against him. He'll find a way, but his options are pretty limited. I could give him some nice big explosions to find me by, but that would be too easy."

"Keeping so quiet must be a great strain for you," Crane commented dryly.

"Tell me about it, doc. If I didn't _know_ that Batsy was devoting every spare hour to trying to find me, I'd go crazy."

Crane gave a mirthless laugh at that. "Indeed. What do you think he's going to do?"

"I have no idea. It's wonderful. He's so _full_ of surprises." The Joker tilted his head closer to Crane's. "Between you and me, I think I'm going to snap before he does. If I'm not 'inflicting myself' on Gotham and Batsy, I get kind of antsy."

Crane did not relish the prospect of a 'snapped' Joker, unless it was the direct result of fear toxin. He was sure that was why the clown had said what he had.

"I see," said Crane.

"So right now I'm just trying to keep busy while I kill time."

It was a figure of speech when anyone else used it. However, when the Joker used it, it seemed genuinely malicious. Crane wondered if this was his own perception or if it was more objective and had something to do with the casual glee with which the Joker uttered 'kill'.

"I see," Crane remarked again, "and in the meantime, I have this sneaking suspicion that you're going to offer another trade. To kill time, of course."

The Joker's smile was answer enough.


	6. Chapter 6

Crane placed his beaker on a heatproof mat and stood. He could pursue chemistry at a later time and this exchange would no doubt demand his full attention.

"You already know what I want from you. Your motives on the hand…" Crane trailed off to scrutinise the Joker's face.

"Ha, me and Scary already played the guessing game, but then, you already knew that."

Crane shrugged. "You're fascinating and I will get answers sooner or later. So what is it that you want this time?"

The Joker took a step forward. Crane's posture stiffened, but his expression betrayed nothing but cold interest.

"This time, you and I are going to play," the Joker grinned.

"Why, did Scarecrow bother you?" Crane asked with feigned concern. His smirk undermined any sincerity. He seemed very pleased at the possibility of getting to the Joker.

"No, I like Scarecrow just fine, he reminds me a bit of myself sometimes."

Crane's smirk twisted into a grimace at the comparison. Scarecrow may not be the most reserved part of Crane's mind but he was _nothing_ like Joker.

"I just thought," the Joker continued, "that you and I should get to know one another a little better, doc."

"Perhaps you want to go out for coffee then," Crane sneered.

The Joker giggled, his expression approximating 'you wish'. "Not really what I had in mind."

"I never would have guessed. Before you name your ridiculous demand, I want to make it clear that I intend to give you a stronger dose this time. The session will be more sustained and more acute."

"If you agree to what I intend, you can give me double what you did."

Crane paused for a moment. That was a relatively significant dose, though nothing even approaching lethality. The effects of his toxin could be plotted exponentially if the right version was administered. The Joker's reaction could be very informative. Crane tried not to show how tempting he found the prospect, though he suspected that the Joker knew.

"What do you want in exchange?" Crane asked levelly.

The Joker was right in Crane's personal space at this point. "Call it a session that will be more acute and more sustained. You and I are going to pick up where Scarecrow and I left off."

Crane found the idea vaguely nauseating. "That's _really_ what you want?"

"Uh-huh. In the bedroom, too."

"You must have an ulterior motive," Crane stated flatly.

"Must I?"

"I don't think you possess any motives that aren't ulterior," Crane paused, "or at least very well camouflaged."

"Look doc, I get that it doesn't interest you that much, but—"

"I fail to see how it could possibly interest _you_. Isn't this sort of thing a tad human for your tastes?"

The Joker snickered. "Something tells me that anything between you and me isn't going to be all that 'human."

"Is that 'something' the voices, perhaps?"

The amusement drained form the Joker's expression. "If you try and imply that I'm insane again, I'm going to show you just how much damage someone who's _perfectly_ sane can do. Just for fun."

Crane gave the Joker a long look. Calling him insane was certainly an oversimplification. Calling him unspeakably dangerous was an understatement. The doctor cleared his throat. "I understand."

The Joker smiled again. "Good. Anyway, I also know you'd be significantly more interested in all this if I was scared at the time which, by the way, is a little weird."

Crane glared. The Joker was lecturing _him_ on being 'weird'. He sincerely hoped the clown was being facetious. Ideally his whole demand would be an exercise in being facetious. Crane doubted he would be so fortunate.

"You see," the Joker continued, ignoring the look on Crane's face, "considering that I don't actually get scared, the best I can offer is that you play this game straight after your little double-dosing experiment. It's the closest thing to real fear you're going to get." The Joker paused and grinned. "Or is it only Scarecrow that gets that way around fear?"

Crane's expression would have been entirely neutral if it weren't for the sharp glint in his eyes. "He isn't the only one, no," Crane replied in measured tones. He appeared not the least be phased by his admission.

The Joker's smile widened. "You see, this is why we should get to know one another better, doc. Don't get me wrong, Scarecrow's fun and all, but you're interesting in another way entirely."

Crane gave a wry smile. "I don't know whether to be flattered or worried. You already know that I find you fascinating, but your capacity to surprise is second to none."

"Heh, and I didn't even have to jump out from behind any doors."

Crane's experience of mirth seldom lingered. "I'm not going to ask for specifics, because I really don't want to know, but I _will_ draw the line in your game. I understand that it's more 'fun' if I play along willingly with this… thing of yours."

"You worry too much, doc. You've got to learn to take life as it comes. Unpredictability is nothing to _fear_. You don't need to _control_ it."

Crane treated the Joker to a very sceptical look. "I see."

~X~

Crane did not bring up the topic of restraints again, but it was agreed that the Joker's coat and the various blades it contained should remain in another room. If anything untoward occurred, it was probably best that the clown wasn't armed.

Crane laid his briefcase on the table and both subject and scientist fell into a rhythm resulting from the first toxin experiment. Crane had still brought out his mask, to the Joker's amusement. However, rather than reaching out for it, he merely flicked his gaze over occasionally. It was enough to keep Scarecrow quiet. Crane stepped forward to deliver the injection with perfect composure despite the somewhat malicious feeling of eagerness. Whatever stupid, puerile little game he ended up playing with the Joker, it would be worth it for this.

The needle slid cleanly through skin cells and epithelia and through into the blood vessel. Crane exhaled as he delivered the clear fluid of his toxin into his subject's system. He kept his eyes on the injection site and a faint smirk played across his lips. The needle was carefully withdrawn and set aside. Not even a bead of blood marred the patch of sterilised skin. Crane looked up. His mouth was dry with anticipation. The toxin worked on the Joker, but only the dose could determine the extent of the effect. While he was mostly unconcerned with the responses that Scarecrow seemed to crave, Crane felt an indefinable need to see fear in the Joker's expression.

The Joker's lazy smirk was unchanging as he waited for the doctor's toxin to take effect. There was no horrified anticipation that so often clouded a subject who was receiving a second dose. This irritated Crane right up until the point when it was clear that the toxin had crossed the Joker's blood/brain barrier and was binding to his neurological receptors. That was when the fun started. The doctor smiled.

For someone who claimed to be entirely impulsive and unrestrained, Crane had never seen such a strong resistance to the experience. The Joker's jaw was clenched and the tendons in his neck stood out like wires. His eyes burned with a certain feral quality. Crane was reminded of the phrase 'fight-or-flight', with a particular emphasis on the former. The clinical, detached part of his mind noted that he would insist on restraints if a higher concentration was to be tested.

He began to think that this might end badly.

The Joker murmured something under his breath. The tone was carefully measured to prevent any cracks from showing. Crane leant closer, trying to hear. It was dangerous, it was stupid and it could end in a number of bad ways, but the doctor _had_ to know.

"It's…not…real," the Joker murmured again. He sounded almost peaceful as he spoke to himself. Then he giggled. The sound was edged with something that might have been one-part-per-million nervousness. The Joker's hand shot out and buried itself in Crane's hair. The doctor's breath hissed between his teeth, but he didn't cry out. Instead he silently berated himself for leaning in so close to such an appalling dangerous test subject.

Crane ignored the pain and twisted his head slightly to look at the Joker's face. The desire for knowledge burned stronger than any threat. Was the clown just now returning to reality and inflicting some sort of revenge for the fear experience? Perhaps Crane had simply been incorporated as part of the hallucination. Neither prospect was particularly appealing.

The Joker's expression was blank, still. His eyes were always the most informative part of his expression, despite their tendency to hold things incomprehensible to others. Right at this moment, the feral quality was overpowering everything except for a tiny spark of induced fear. Despite the pain in his scalp and the imminent danger, Crane was focused.

"Tell me what you see, Joker. What are you afraid of?" Crane's voice nearly shook. He hated that fact.

Either by chance or design, the Joker's free hand closed around the doctor's throat. The grip was tight and for a moment Crane honestly thought he was going to die.

"Nothing you'd be able to understand, _Crane_," the Joker rasped.

Crane's eyes widened. Was the Joker seeing reality or merely guessing? What was he experiencing?

The grip around the doctor's throat did not tighten enough to cut off his oxygen supply completely, though each breath was a struggle. The Joker's own breaths were drawn quick and ragged; the air expelled almost immediately. Suddenly, Crane was released and pushed back so that he fell awkwardly against the table, narrowly avoiding his briefcase of supplies.

The Joker's laughter rang out harsh and manic. The sound was grating and Crane winced as he drew in deep breaths. The air in the room felt oppressive and stifling. The event that had just transpired was outside either of their expectations. The Joker did better at adapting though, and he didn't need the same control and certainty that the doctor craved. Still, even the clown's demeanour was slightly off in a way that was distinct from his usual type of off-ness. Maybe it was fear or maybe it was just plain annoyance.

It was only at this point that Crane noted that he himself was carrying symptoms of sympathetic activation—a fear response. His heart rate was elevated, his breathing was harsh and the tension in his muscles made him feel on edge. There was only one anomaly in his diagnosis. He was aroused. That was a supposed to be a function of parasympathetic activity, but for Crane, this situation was not unexpected. The anomaly was arguably intriguing from a psychological perspective, but at the moment, he was feeling a far more visceral interest regarding his current state. That was truly disconcerting.

Crane raised his head. Even in his harried state, the doctor still took a moment to regard his subject. The Joker's mirth had subsided and he was staring intently. His expression was unsettling, perhaps even frightening. Crane removed his glasses to rub at his eyes with one hand. When he looked up again, he met the Joker's gaze squarely. "If you want a willing participant in your absurd little mind-game, then I suggest we reconvene in the bedroom right now." Crane's voice came out somewhat scratchy, but that really was the least of his concerns.

The Joker's disconcerting expression held for another second before a smile slid across his face. This new expression was anything but pleasant. "So fear really does it for you?"

It was probably rhetorical but Crane nodded sharply. He was not accustomed to the sensations that were vying for attention in his hindbrain. He felt unevolved. The Joker stood, perhaps a tad unsteadily. Crane tried to rationalise why he found the notion so satisfying.

"This is completely insane," he murmured to himself.

"You don't know the half of it, doc."

Wonderful. Now Crane could add excellent hearing to Joker's already significant list of uncanny abilities. "Let's just get this over with."

"You know, that attitude might be just a little more convincing if you weren't panting _quite_ so heavily."

It was true that Crane was breathing heavily, but that was a combination of fear and—he blamed the entire situation, really. This was nothing like his prior experiments. Even under the influence of his own compound he hadn't felt this sort of thing. Complicating the issue and overlaying everything was this unshakable sense of achievement. The Joker felt fear, some kind of fear, even if it was only chemically induced. Crane had witnessed that; had even caused it, and though he had never felt such a sharp sense of fear as when he had though that the Joker was about to kill him, he was elated.

Crane was still reeling with that sense of power and he could almost imagine a faint tang in the air that marked the presence of fear. It was unscientific to describe fear as being anywhere but in the body and mind; a product of chemical reactions. But nevertheless there was something so real about fear, so integral, that at times Crane felt he could almost sense it as something beyond the internal, as something _out there_. He blamed Scarecrow for these flights of fancy. Crane was a scientist, a believer in empirical observation, but by its very nature, fear straddled the line between objective reality and the unreal nightmare.

The Joker sauntered toward the bedroom. There was no indication of hesitation in his gait and he seemed quite pleased with himself. Crane trailed after with an assortment of thoughts that would take hours to untangle.

_When you're playing with him, hurt him. Trust me on this one. _Scarecrow's voice whispered in Crane's mind even though there was no chance of him being overheard.

'Are you still harping on about his alleged masochism?'

_He is. I know it. I don't know what he thinks he's going to get out of you, but there's got to be reason that he's so accommodating about our interest in fear._

'This is insane.'

_You already mentioned that. He is _also_ insane, just follow your instincts. You'll see that I'm right._

'My instincts?' Crane's internal tone was tinged with scepticism.

_We want power. Control. Ideally, fear. _

Crane swallowed. 'Of course. But I doubt the Joker is going to be quite so accommodating with those proclivities.'

There was a shoulder-less shrug from Scarecrow. _He certainly wants something from you. It's beyond me, but then you're the psychiatrist, Jonathan. I'm sure you'll work it out._


	7. Chapter 7

Scarecrow fell silent as Crane entered the bedroom. The clown was sitting on the edge of the bed with a large grin plastered across his face. He patted the covers beside him. Crane sneered but took the cue. He was feeling reckless. The partial success of his experiment had sharpened his senses as well as his appetite for fear and power.

He hesitated, gauging the situation, but the clown's smug grin was grating. He had no right to look so pleased after an encounter with Crane's toxin. At that point, all the doctor wanted to do was wipe that expression off the Joker's face. More than anything, though, he wanted to see that spark of fear again. Rationally, he knew it wasn't going to happen in this context. Right now, rationality had fled.

He grabbed the Joker's upper arms and pushed him down toward the bed. To Crane's surprise, the clown didn't seem to mind the initiative. Crane was also surprised to find just how satisfying it was looking down at the Joker from this angle. Here was a sense of power that the doctor hadn't experienced outside of his experiments.

The clown continued to grin up at him, entirely unconcerned by the situation. In fact he seemed extremely amused, as if privy to some obscure joke. Despite himself and the situation, Crane found that he was giving his own smirk in response. Rational thought was now just an abstract idea. It had been shattered by the prior fear responses—both the Joker's and his own. Crane couldn't quite quantify what it was he wanted right now, but he was fairly certain that it would involve the sort of things he usually left to Scarecrow.

Recalling Scarecrow's advice, he dug his fingers into the Joker's arms hard enough to bruise. The Joker's eyes slid closed for a moment and he giggled. He also snapped his hips upward. Crane gasped at the brief moment of friction between them. It had sent a spark of pleasure running up his spine. Even knowing the chemicals and receptors involved did little to mitigate the response. It was moments like this that Crane could almost accept the idea of mind/body duality. He wanted that sensation again and it had nothing to do with intellectual desires. Crane shifted one hand to grip the Joker's hip. He was not going to be taken off guard again.

Even through the layers of his clothing, it was apparent that the Joker had very little spare flesh. Of course, Crane himself was mostly pointy bones and sinew, but the Joker's usual attire gave him the impression of bulk that was not necessarily carried over to his actual build. Where he got his strength from was a mystery. The clown was deceptive by nature.

Crane tightened his grip again and this time he pressed down against the Joker. It was a deliberate choice. He was aroused enough that this would be the simplest and least uncomfortable way to deal with it. Besides, if the Joker achieved whatever it was he wanted here, they could trade again. The thought of what would happen to the Joker under an even stronger dose of toxin made Crane pressed down harder. Perhaps he could understand why Scarecrow was so eager to hear the Joker scream.

This entire situation was base and unevolved, but there was also something raw and instinctual about it that was eroding clear thought. There was the occasional flash of yellow teeth from behind a ruined mouth, when the Joker's expression twisted into something approximating a knowing smirk. Even through clothing, the brush of the Joker's thigh against his own was stimulating. The sharp press of a hip bone or the graze of fingertips was entirely distracting. It made Crane feel flushed and on edge. The heat between their two bodies was definitely not helping matters. Crane knew the core temperature of the human body and could calculate the heat it emitted in his head. He could not, however, predict how appealing the sensation was in practice.

Crane began to find his pants, and in particular his undergarments, to be restrictive and uncomfortable. The Joker seemed to be thinking the same thing because he moved his free hand down to start unfastening his pants. Crane paused, his eyes drawn to the sudden movement. In a rare moment that was completely free of analysis, he grabbed the clown's wrist and pushed it back to the bed. It was a token gesture, as Crane required a free hand, but the Joker understood and decided to humour him. He merely gave the doctor an enquiring look which Crane ignored as he took over the task.

The Joker sighed as his arousal was freed. Crane went about the same task with his own pants. The Joker twitched when the back of Crane's nails grazed over him unintentionally. Even in the exceptional circumstances, the doctor's hand was steady. When bared flesh finally came into contact, gasps dissolved into moans. They picked up an unconscious rhythm, rubbing against one another. The Joker was unexpectedly easy to move with. He was adaptable and excellent at anticipating minute changes in the situation.

Crane was focused on watching the Joker's face. It was certainly better than thinking about what he was actually doing. He enjoyed watching the expressions writhe across that damaged countenance. This was the sort of lack of inhibition that he had wanted from the Joker during the dosing experiments. Uninhibited or not, it was clear that the clown was watching Crane just as carefully. Despite his apparent enthusiasm for friction, whatever he saw in Crane's expression held his true attention.

Crane was close. The tiny part of his mind that was as still operational could recognise it in the building intensity of the pleasure and the way his muscles were tensing. His eyes closed, and he allowed the instincts of his body to take over. At that exact point he felt fingers close around him and glide up his erection. Crane gasped and shuddered, jolting forward in the Joker's grip. "Damn it, clown!" he hissed.

There was no way to fight the sensory overload. Crane's hips thrust forward as he finished and his fingertips dug into the Joker's flesh reflexively. A groan slid past his lips but his eyes snapped open, a glare fighting its way into his expression, past the pleasure haze. He was just in time to see the Joker's face twist into an expression that probably indicated pleasure. The expression was eerily similar to the one he wore when he was in pain.

Crane panted and tried to scowl. He managed to hold onto the expression when the Joker burst into laughter. The sound was a little choked and the clown gasped for breath between giggles. Crane made a muted sound of derision and rose from the bed. He stalked off to the bathroom to get a towel.

Once he was out of the clown's presence, Crane took a moment to collect himself. He placed his hands on the sides of the sink and let his weight rest on his arms. A glance at the mirror revealed his dishevelled appearance and the slight flush across his cheeks. He tried to feel disgusted with his behaviour, but he was actually feeling pretty good, if a little aggressive. The Joker's game was still maddeningly opaque, but the feeling of power had been more than welcome. The whole experience had been tolerable, though not something he would go out of his way to repeat.

_Wow._

Crane was startled by Scarecrow's sudden input. He hid it behind terse tones. 'You've been awfully quiet.'

_Huh?_ Scarecrow seemed rather preoccupied.

'Scarecrow?'

_It's you and the clown…just…wow. I've got to try that some time._

Crane sighed. 'I suppose I should have expected as much from you.'

_There's nothing wrong with a little pleasure, Jonathan. _

'Then unless he specifies my attention, you can participate next time. This is hardly my idea of time well spent.'

_Surely seeing someone in bed and unguarded is a good step toward understanding them?_

Crane would have given Scarecrow a sceptical look. 'Firstly, I doubt that the clown is ever unguarded. Secondly, in primal terror rather than 'in bed' is the best way to approach understanding. Thirdly, if anything, I would have been more unguarded and he—' Crane trailed off. He thought it through for a moment.

'Surely that's not what he's doing.'

Scarecrow snorted. _It's unlikely. He's smart and I doubt he needs these bedroom antics to get a better understanding of you. Though it is an area where you're vulnerable because of inexperience._

Crane's expression twisted slightly at the mention of vulnerability. 'Hmm.'

Crane cleaned himself off and then grabbed a fresh towel. When he got back to the bedroom, he tossed the clean towel at the Joker's face. The clown didn't attempt to catch it and simply let it fall over his head.

Crane snorted.

"That was almost a chuckle," came the Joker's muffled voice.

"Well you do look ridiculous," Crane explained.

The Joker grabbed the towel, a grin adorning his face as he made a point of cleaning himself of lewdly. Crane looked away. He only looked back when he heard the Joker's towel hit the floor. The clown seemed to be in good mood. It would probably be best to engage him in conversation while he was feeling satisfied. There would be a greater chance of having questions answered.

"Once again you let me take the initiative. I know you don't value control, but I thought you'd at least want to be in charge, as it were." Crane kept his tone casual and sat down on the edge of the bed.

The Joker gave him a faintly amused look. "Look doc, you're static and rigid. There's no yield in your personality. Me, now I'm flexible, adaptable. You know, all those 'bend so you don't break' sort of lessons. And I don't mind working around your inflexible little hang-ups because I know that if pressure's applied in just the right spot with you, you—you'd _snap_ like a twig."

Crane's expression had darkened. The clown seemed to be choking back his laughter with limited success.

"Don't worry," the Joker continued as his mirth subsided, "I'm not going to see just how far you _won't_ bend. I like the shape you're in. This is just something you might want to keep in mind."

Crane's expression was cold and closed down. "Is that what you think?" he asked.

The Joker grinned slyly. "It's what I know."

"I know you possess a ruthless intelligence that you show glimpses of, but that doesn't mean that you possess some higher insight."

The Joker's expression remained amused, but his tone changed rapidly. He was still playing, but there was a gleeful edge to his words that was not the least bit friendly. "Maybe, maybe not, but you're still obvious. The fear thing? You probably had a pretty scary sort of childhood. Smart, but not strong: I'm guessing you were bullied a lot. Neglectful family perhaps? Abusive? If Scary isn't a coping mechanism, then I don't know what is."

As proficient as the Joker was a reading people and even with his uncanny ability to pick apart the most determined psyches, he did not expect the reaction he received. Crane laughed. The sound was clear and bright. It was rather at odds with the doctor's general demeanour. Even bemused, the Joker smiled. He liked it when other people laughed and getting the doc to laugh was a challenge and a half.

"You can't honestly think that somehow _explains_ me," Crane chortled. "While I admire your ability to join the dots like a prodigious five-year-old, you must know that I underwent psychoanalysis as a requirement for becoming a psychiatrist. A troubled childhood doesn't mean a single thing. Do you know how many individuals have troubled childhoods and then don't turn out like this? There are so many factors, environmental, genetic—molecular even—that there is no way that some sympathetic little sob story means a goddamned thing. You yourself are the prototypical example." Crane sobered a bit. "Though in all honesty, I don't believe that I'm telling you anything that you don't already know."

The Joker smirked. "Yeah, pretty much. I just wanted to know how much _you_ saw. And I'm pleasantly surprised. You're not bad, for a shrink. People like to think that this," here the Joker indicated his scars with a flick of his wrist, "somehow explains me."

Crane scoffed. "I've dealt with so many patients over the years—"

"I'll just bet you _dealt_ with them."

Crane ignored the insinuation. Research took precedence over a stifling ethics system and if he shattered a few minds along the way, that was all in the name of science. Honestly, it was the only meaningful way for most people to contribute to something truly important.

He continued as if the Joker hadn't interrupted. "And in dealing with patients it's easy to find patterns, but it's even easier to find exceptions. The mind is worse than the English language, in that respect. Part of the reason I went into the biochemical side of psychology rather than the more humanities-oriented areas was because chemicals behave in a precise fashion. The only conclusion that you can ever draw from the 'social sciences' is that some do and some don't."

A faint smile played across Crane's face, though it was gone before it was really established. "However, I also think it's only fair for me to return your favour of analysis. You want to know how much I see? Well I can certainly give you a professional opinion."

The Joker's expression was smug. Whatever Crane saw, it would inevitably fall short. The Joker knew that he didn't fit with any construct used to describe people. There was no scale, there was no category, and there was no _box_ that would ever be able to contain him. The problem with psychiatrists was that they liked their _boxes_ and definitive answers.

He'd heard plenty of diagnoses at Arkham ranging from anti-social personality disorder to borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia to bipolar disorder and a combination of several dysfunctions. He even convinced one psychiatrist that he was a kleptomaniac when he had been particularly bored.

The problem was that he had bits and pieces, that he picked and chose his symptoms. But essentially, _fundamentally_, he knew that he wasn't crazy. It was really everyone else with their cute little systems of complex make-believe that were insane. Even Batsy wasn't completely sane. He persisted in deluding himself that was human. Now that was just plain _absurd_.

Crane mirrored the Joker's smug expression. From experience he knew a traditional diagnosis would be mostly impossible. However, he too could join a few dots or at least highlight some interesting areas. Crane was not an adaptable person, but he was an adaptable psychiatrist. There was a reason that he had been the youngest Director of Arkham in the history of the institution. The doctor cleared his throat.

"Well, I know that you are completely divorced from the human condition. You have no sense of self preservation, you have no innate, instinctive conscience and I'm beginning to believe that you don't even have a past. The fear I inflict on you is pure chemistry. If you have the capacity for natural fear, I'm sure it's something highly abstract. Maybe under the influence of my compound you see yourself as one more normal, robotic face in the crowd. Maybe you see yourself alone in complete isolation, unable to be what you are without witnesses." Crane shook his head slowly. "You are about as far away from human as is humanly possible. You begin to understand, perhaps, why I find you so fascinating."

The Joker was silent, considering for a moment before he replied. "What can I say? I'm a fascinating kind of guy." He smiled.


	8. Chapter 8

The next morning, Crane woke to an empty bed. He savoured the solitude for several minutes before he wondered where the Joker was and if his absence indicated dire events in the near future. Visions of kitchen fires and 'reorganised' laboratories eventually persuaded Crane to see where his unsolicited roommate had gone.

Upon searching the apartment it became apparent that the Joker was out. This was an unexpected, though not astounding, turn of events. Mostly Crane was grateful for the privacy. There was nothing to indicate how long the Joker would take or if he'd even be back at all. It was the perfect opportunity to indulge in some chemistry.

Crane had only been working with the experimental phase of his compound's use. As informative and fascinating as that had been, there was something gratifying about working directly with chemicals without the imprecision of biology getting in the way. A few months ago, Crane had started producing a variant that would allow for particularly vivid hallucinations that relied more heavily on the subject's mind than external cues from the environment. The purpose was to use it to investigate a subject's personal fears. It would also be useful for more… resistant test subjects.

He couldn't remember how far along he had gotten with it. The process had been interrupted while he had been consolidating territory in Gotham's drug trade. But now the dealers had begun to realise just who they were dealing with, just _what_ they were dealing with, and things had become more organised. Their choices were pretty limited after the Bat's intervention and they were in far too deep to consider alternative career options. It seemed that only those who would play on the costume-associated board that the Batman had established had any chance of success. Still, Crane knew a few things about good business and made sure that any drugs cut with his compound were especially addictive. It was all pharmacodynamics.

Now that he had the time and the Joker's presence was not a distraction, Crane could perfect his project. Dosing the Joker with the ensuing compound could yield very interesting results. Of course it would also be a valuable tool in his specific research. That had to be his primary concern.

Crane made his way to his lab and began laying out the equipment he would need. Volumetric flasks and test-tube racks were gathered together. He flipped open one of his older notebooks and ran his index finger down the columns of equations. There were notes scribbled in the margines. Detailed methods and resultant conclusions were written out in his neat handwriting. Everything was in pen. For whatever reason, the Joker had once whined about the absence of pencils in the apartment. Crane had explained that a true scientist always wrote research notes in pen so that the results couldn't be erased or surreptitiously doctored.

Crane found the notes relating to the new toxin variant. He was pleased to see that he had come further in the synthesis than he had remembered. The necessary side-chains had been modified and he had tested it in animal models. There were three revised equations that indicated the refining steps that he had taken. A note in the margin indicated that he had even tried it on a victim without any unanticipated side-effects. It had been a hasty affair during a dealer-related attack, but the follow up indicated the non-lethal nature of the compound. His lips curved upward slightly as he read the quick side note that mentioned how the victim had been screaming about a monster from under his bed. The toxin must have dredged up a childhood fear, arguably separate from environmental cues. Perfect.

In fact, there was only one final phase that needed to be enacted. Crane removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. No wonder he had postponed the proper synthesis of this particular compound and neglected further development. Crane was up to the stage where he tested a severely diluted amount on himself.

There were several reasons that he forced himself to undergo such an experience. There were the obvious pragmatic reasons such as resistance building and the fact that he'd do anything for his research. Also if he was forced to endure a different variant of his own toxin, he'd know what to expect. However there were deeper, less academic reasons behind his choice.

Everything came down to fear. Fear was intoxicating. It wasn't that Crane enjoyed the experience of his own compound, more often than not, quite the contrary. But he was drawn to do it in the same way the child was compelled to touch the stove despite the warning. He tested the limits of his own fear just as avidly as he tested it in others—perhaps even more so.

As far as Crane was concerned, the only humans that lived without fear were those with serious chemical imbalances. One might as well be born without a limb as to be born without the ability to experience fear. It happened, of course. Any genetic variation that wasn't lethal would eventually turn up in the population. However, Crane did not delude himself into believing that he himself could live without fear and more importantly, he wouldn't want to. However, he was a rational being and the control of fear was a hallmark of intellect ruling over instinct.

There was no sense in delaying. Crane started to produce a fresh batch of the compound. His notes made the process run smoothly and efficiently. The most time consuming part was the distillation and the testing of purity through boiling point analysis. When he discovered that there were no significant impurities, it was time to begin.

Crane retrieved his briefcase from the bedroom. While walking through his temporary residence, he made sure the Joker hadn't slipped in while he had been working on the new compound. It didn't occur to Crane to take his absence as an opportunity to find a new hideout away from the Joker. Firstly, if the clown had tracked him down once, he could do it again. It was not wise to underestimate the Joker's resourcefulness. Secondly, it would be tantamount to running away. Crane had more pride than that and enough sense to realise that it would be showing weakness. Besides, he still wanted to pick apart the Joker's psyche and Scarecrow still desperately wanted to draw out a scream. Finally, though he was loath to admit it, Crane had grown somewhat accustomed to the Joker's presence. He wasn't precisely fond of the clown, but there was something magnetic about his personality. The Joker had a strange, twisted sort of charisma that went a long way toward explaining why his thugs seemed drawn to him and perhaps even cared about his fate.

Crane returned to the lab. Scarecrow was hovering around the forefront of his mind, both to lend support and because he had a certain taste for fear, even their own. Crane prepared a solution of the toxin diluted to point-five molarity. Then he wrapped a makeshift tourniquet around his upper arm and pulled it tight with his right hand. Occasionally Crane would allow Scarecrow to perform these preliminary tasks. In those instances, Scarecrow would tighten the tourniquet with his teeth. He had those sorts of dramatic tendencies which the doctor didn't care to question.

Crane sterilised the patch of skin above where his median cubital vein was now pronounced. Only then did he opened a sealed syringe and draw up the correct amount of fluid for a mild response. He avoided taking up air bubbles with practiced ease and he allowed a few drops to be pushed from the tip of the hollow needle.

This was it.

The syringe slid into his vein. Crane was focused and his hand was steady as he injected the toxin into his system. In the last few moments of complete lucidity, he removed the tourniquet and picked up a pen. His notes were seldom clear while under the influence of his toxin, but it was the principal of the matter.

The toxin streamed through his body. Scarecrow murmured words of reassurance. His voice sounded so clear that Crane could almost imagine his presence in the room. The toxin always made Scarecrow sharper and more distinct; in short, more _real_. Crane managed to scribble a few words about heart-rate and the feeling of a cold sweat despite the sudden tremor in his hand. After a moment's thought he jotted down a note about the shaking too.

Then his head snapped up. The hallucinations were starting. It was birds, of course—crows, to be specific. Crane gritted his teeth. He was almost accustomed to their phantom presence. He hated the reminder and he hated the fear that they could still inspire. He could control his fear of them under normal conditions. With the added stimulation of the toxin, it was that much harder. He choked back a scream, trying to focus on the sound Scarecrow's voice. The appearance of crows was a typical response. He managed to write out a shaky '_cro'_ with the assumption that he would be able to decipher it later.

Then things took a turn for the worse. Even the earliest versions of his toxin could create reasonably convincing crows' wings from the shadows in a room. This particular toxin, however, had been designed for the express purpose of creating hallucinations that did not require the transformation of real objects. Out of nowhere, Crane's mind conjured up an image of Batman. He did scream then. The sudden appearance made the dark figure seem all too real. The pen clattered to the floor and Crane gripped the edge of the table.

Under the influence of other toxins, the Bat's visage took on a demonic quality. This variant made him seem real, basically human. However, he was carrying a canister of fear toxin. If Crane were possessed of all his faculties at that moment, he would have found this detail fascinating. As it was, he was spending all of his energy resisting irrational fear-driven impulses.

It was a mild dose. Before the Bat had taken two steps he disappeared. Crane dared to hope that it was over. Then he froze. The Joker had walked into the room. Real or hallucination? He couldn't tell. Neither prospect appealed right now, but the uncertainty made things even worse. There was nothing particularly exaggerated about his appearance, but this toxin seemed good at replicating parts of reality.

Real or not, the smile was very disconcerting. In case the Joker really had returned, Crane tried not to show his agitation. He met the Joker's gaze. "Joker," he managed to croak. The smile widened. Under the influence of the toxin, the expression was alarming. Then, just as Batman had, the clown disappeared.

Crane slumped forward with relief. He took deep, even breaths and reached under his workbench to retrieve the pen. Next to the erratically written '_cro' _Crane recorded more comprehensive notes: _'Human-looking Batman. Canister fear toxin. Fear of Bat or compromised mental state? Joker. First appearance in hallucination…'_ The pen lifted off the paper and Crane found himself tapping the end against the bench top. He didn't know what else to write about the Joker's appearance. It had been brief and he hadn't done more than simply smile, except for a certain look in his eyes. Crane shivered.

He knew that it was sensible to fear the Joker. The man was a deranged killer. Despite the civilised façade that Crane was becoming accustomed to, he would only behave in such a fashion as long as it suited him. Crane knew about his crimes; their brutality, destruction and sheer ingenuity. One could almost believe that he personified chaos, just as he claimed. Still, while the clown was willing to be cooperative, Crane would take advantage of that. He doubted that any psychiatrist had ever had this unparalleled access to a mind like the Joker's.

Crane closed his notebook. In the aftermath of the toxin exposure, he went back to working with his chemicals. It was the most soothing activity available and it didn't require a great amount of physical exertion. Scarecrow's presence was still strongly pronounced. In their experience, this would be the case for the next few days. Right now, it was a comfort.

Crane felt pleased while he worked. The most difficult part was over and now he had a new research tool. In the forefront of their mind, Scarecrow smirked. He had a new compound to play with.

~X~

It was late in the evening when the front door rattled and there was a muffled curse from outside. Crane looked up from the psychology journal he was reading, feeling a strong sense of déjà vu. Seconds later, the door thudded open and the Joker lurched into the room. He dropped a makeshift lock-pick and gave Crane a perfunctory nod. His makeup was partially rubbed off and there was blood smeared across his hairline and down one cheek. There was also some spattered over his right sleeve and lapel. His grin was wide enough to pull at his scars. It only took a cursory glance to reveal that the blood was not his.

The Joker pulled off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. A bit of blood had soaked through to his skin. He made his way to the bathroom and left a red streak where he brushed against the wall. Crane raised an eyebrow, wondering what this heralded. He rose and followed the Joker.

In the bathroom the Joker ran his hands under the tap and splashed water up his arms. Crane leant against the doorframe to watch. This flagrant reminder of the Joker's capacity for violence was drawing Scarecrow's attention. Crane retained control through detached curiosity, but his posture was more casual, if a little tense.

"Trouble?" the doctor asked.

"Not really. I was just getting a little… stir-crazy," the Joker explained.

"I see. So you decided to go out on a killing spree."

The Joker snorted. "Hardly a spree and besides, _they_ came after _me_."

"They?"

"Muggers. I learnt a while back that if I go wandering around the Narrows, sticking to the shadows and walking like a victim, I can attract all sorts of amusing attention. The armatures don't recognise a threat until it's too laaate."

Outwardly the Joker appeared fairly pleased, but his tone was a little too bright and there was something unsettling about his demeanour. Despite the warning signs, Crane wasn't going to back off. This was too intriguing.

"You obviously went out for a reason and forgive me if I don't think that haphazard bloodlust is your main motivation for doing things."

"Do you always have to know everything, doc?" The Joker's light words were edged with menace. "If I had a motto it would be haphazard. Or indiscriminate, or random or just pure _chaos_. Pick a synonym—I've got plenty."

Crane wasn't going to push, though Scarecrow, hanging around his periphery, was clearly keen to prod. Silence was a valuable tactic for any psychiatrist to use. People instinctively tried to fill it up and even their inane chatter could often yield interesting information. Crane was an expert at crafting silence and waiting for people to reveal themselves. He doubted the Joker would fall for such a ploy. It was unlikely that the clown would be bothered with uncomfortable social norms. Still there was just a chance that he wanted to talk and if that were the case, silence would allow him to converse on his own terms. That would much less dangerous than trying to impel him.

The Joker's breathing got heavier as the silence stretched. The slight edge of tension in the room seemed to coalesce until it was thick enough to choke on. The Joker leant forward and gripped the edges of the sink, his knuckles whitening under the strain. His shoulders were hunched, but rather than being a defensive action, it made him look like he was ready to pounce at his reflection.

"I had to at least give him a clue!" he growled.

It was moments like this that reminded the doctor that he was dealing with someone who had been sent to Arkham Asylum for a reason. Crane didn't need to ask who 'he' referred to. It seemed the Joker did indeed want to talk. A leading question would probably work, but the ex-psychiatrist elected to remain silent. Professionalism aside, it seemed the safest course of action.

The Joker went back to washing the blood off himself, this time focusing on his face. The smearing of his makeup didn't seem to bother him. He grabbed a towel and dried his face with far more force than necessary. By that point, his makeup was mostly absent, save for some faded black around his eyes and touches of red caught in his pitted scar tissue. It was hard to decide whether the end effect made him look more human or less human.

The Joker seemed a little calmer, but only by comparison. He dropped the towel in the sink. "Him and me, Batsy, Batsy, _Batsy_, we're like…" the Joker trailed off into a half-hearted giggle. "I bet you're just _dying_ to know how I see him. And me."

He turned around to face Crane. "Am I right, _doctor_?"

Crane's expression was carefully neutral as he viewed the Joker. Saying the right thing was vital, as there was real danger here. This was the Joker at his most volatile. Had Crane been an empathetic sort of individual, he may have spared a thought for the unfortunate muggers and what mood they must have encountered from their killer.

"You know where my interests lie," said Crane. There, that was sufficiently vague: neither confirming nor denying. "We can talk about whatever you want." That was a risk. It was a psychiatrist phrase and the Joker probably knew it from Arkham.

The Joker's eyes narrowed.

Crane tried to slow his heart-rate. He took a silent breath before continuing. "Though I generally prefer the sound of my own voice, yours probably comes in as a close second."

There was the tiniest spark of hesitation in the Joker's expression. He tilted his head. "Was that a joke? A self deprecating one without the hostile sarcasm?" the Joker asked.

Crane shrugged though he was still tense.

The Joker giggled. Then he laughed. The sound was harsh but it built until the clown was nearly doubled over with the force of his mirth. "You, you can s-still surprise me, doc," he managed to choke out between giggles.

Crane let out an inaudible sigh of relief. The feeling of near-pure fear was making him feel light-headed. He barely registered Scarecrow's presence lurking near the forefront of his mind. The Joker stepped forward and Crane avoided stepping back with a conscious effort of will. "So we'll talk about whatever I want to talk about," the Joker mused. "But I don't think I want to talk about him with you."

The Joker's words were fairly vague, but still—

"I figured as much. I was the one who was usually around when the Bat made an appearance."

The Joker smiled. "Hello, Scarecrow. Not actually what I meant but," here the Joker tilted his head again, "I guess you have a story or two about the big bad Bat."

Scarecrow smirked. The effects of testing the toxin and the Joker's recently threatening behaviour had set the stage. Scarecrow would have been around even without the Joker's unintended invitation. But switching right at that point was just too good an effect to pass up.


	9. Chapter 9

Scarecrow shrugged. The gesture was a lazy roll of his shoulders. "We've crossed paths a few times, not that I was trying to attract his attention," here Scarecrow gave the Joker a rather pointed look, "he just has this habit of turning up and spoiling things."

The Joker smirked to himself. "Yeah, he does that."

The clown brushed past Scarecrow in a very deliberate way and walked toward the bedroom. Scarecrow stared hard at the Joker's retreating back and tried to work out what this latest mood shift indicated. He shrugged. Understanding really wasn't that important to him. However, he had this strange sense of intuition that the Joker wanted to talk. It wasn't simply his Batman obsession either, though that was inevitably going to be the topic of conversation. It was more that the Joker was unlikely to have had many opportunities to articulate the things that went through his head.

Potential audiences would either be screaming and fleeing or trying to take him down, in the case of the police and the Bat. Scarecrow's limited experience of henchmen suggested that they'd also make poor conversationalists. It wasn't that the Joker needed a confidante or anything (his potential dislike of isolation aside), but he'd probably enjoy the opportunity to babble.

Though he would not admit it, in some ways Scarecrow could relate. He could count the number of people who knew of his existence on one hand. He didn't exactly mind. His world pretty much began and ended with Jonathan, and maybe with fear. That was fine. He cared deeply about Jonathan… but it was nice to talk with someone else _out there _who called him by his name. Scarecrow liked that the Joker treated him as different person. From the bits of psychology that he had picked up from Jonathan, it was an identity thing.

Scarecrow went after the Joker but paused when he got to the threshold of the bedroom. The Joker was lying on his back, on top of the bed covers, with his hands laced behind his head. He was smiling faintly, almost to himself. Scarecrow stalked over to the bed and sat on the edge about halfway down. His gaze wandered around the room, but settled back on the Joker at short intervals.

"So," the Joker began, "does Batsy always get the best of you?"

Scarecrow snorted. "No. He's good, but you were right about the timeline, he was still finding his feet when he and I first tangled."

"Uh-huh." The Joker didn't sound particularly convinced.

Rather than getting angry, Scarecrow allowed himself a slow smirk. "Well, there was that time I set him on fire, for instance."

The reaction was instantaneous. The Joker scrambled upward until he was sitting awkwardly with his weight resting on his arms. "Really? You set him on _fire_?" He began to giggle.

Scarecrow suppressed his own amusement as best he could, though he couldn't stop the cruel smile that snuck across his face. "Oh yes. You see I told him he needed to lighten up, but he's a man of action. I didn't think he was really listening, so I thought a demonstration would be the way to go."

The Joker was howling with laughter at this point and even Scarecrow chuckled at the memory. There was something very satisfying about prevailing against the Batman. Scarecrow did not obsess about the vigilante the way the Joker did, not even close, but he didn't hold quite the agitated disdain that encompassed Jonathan's entire opinion. The Bat knew a thing or two about how to use fear. Besides, he might be one of the few people who knew of Scarecrow's existence, or at least suspected.

Scarecrow also held mixed opinions about being forcibly dosed with fear toxin. Jonathan was outraged and indignant about the whole affair. In that context he had had absolutely no appreciation for the irony. Conversely, Scarecrow didn't know what to think. He'd come out to handle the worst of it, as neither of them had ever been exposed to such a high concentration. It hadn't been pleasant. There was no comparison, no way to make sense of the event. Scarecrow had never experienced such intense terror. It had certainly given him a firmer appreciation of Jonathan's chemistry brilliance. It _hadn't_ been pleasant, but it had been…interesting. Their self-testing meant that there hadn't been any untoward side-effects, barring the occasional nightmare, and Scarecrow had no problems letting things go…

But it was more than that. The matter also indicated some interesting things about the Bat himself. Scarecrow had limited interest in psychology that didn't deal with fear, but he could be fascinated by individuals. Batman toed a very fine line as a vigilante. He was willing to do practically anything to further his ideas of justice. He would sacrifice truth, break laws and terrorise the criminal populace. Yet still he maintained this sense of being the 'good guy'. Somehow it made Scarecrow feel better knowing that he had only been defeated by someone who was willing to be so ruthless.

"He was dosed with toxin at the time," Scarecrow mused out loud. "It would be interesting to know what was going through his head."

The Joker was gazing steadily at Scarecrow as he spoke. Scarecrow shifted to meet the stare. "He didn't really scream. That was a disappointment, but the look of fear in his eyes was almost as good as yours."

The Joker's smile wasn't entirely pleasant. "Why don't you tell me about the time he beat you at your own game, Scarecrow?"

Scarecrow's eyes flashed.

_How the hell does he know about that?_

'He's probably been through our file at Arkham. Batman dragged us there after he dosed us. The symptoms would have been listed when we were processed,' Crane replied. 'And don't provoke the maniac, Scarecrow. He might not stop at insults and mind-games if you push. Remember what we're dealing with here.'

_You worry too much._

Scarecrow resumed his conversation with the Joker and ignored Crane's warnings. He didn't like losing the upper hand and risk-taking was all part of the fun.

"What's there to say? You already seem to know the story," Scarecrow stated flatly.

"I know the event. I don't know the _story_. You set the Bat on fire. Do you think this was his way of getting revenge?"

Scarecrow sneered. "No. It was more of an interrogation technique."

Something flashed across the Joker's expression too quickly to be deciphered. His dark eyes fixed on Scarecrow's face with a startling intensity. "Tell me." The words were spoken without inflection and the Joker's voice was ragged around the edges.

Scarecrow stared back, fascinated by the Joker's change in demeanour. It was unsettling though, and after a few moments Scarecrow's gaze wandered about the room as if to find the right words. He had a feeling that what he said would be important, but he couldn't classify why. It wasn't precisely about danger, but there was definitely something hanging in the air.

"He wanted to know who we were working for," Scarecrow explained slowly. "He was beginning to see the outline of the plot, but he needed more information. The police were about to arrive so there wasn't any time for subtlety. He needed to break through quickly."

The Joker seemed to be absorbing every word. He barely blinked. "What was it like?" he asked quietly.

Scarecrow thought it through, remembering his impression of the event. The Joker's strange behaviour was only a secondary concern. "Terrifying. Fascinating," Scarecrow admitted. In the back of his mind, Jonathan was silent.

The Joker nodded. His gaze dropped to the bed and then flickered around the rest of the room. Scarecrow relaxed slightly, though his pulse was still hammering in his arteries. He removed his glasses and placed them on the set of draws beside the bed. The Joker watched him with a speculative expression.

"Something on your mind, Scary?"

Scarecrow shrugged. "Always. But I am thinking about something in particular."

The Joker grinned, but it no longer held an unstable edge. "Something par_tic_ular," he repeated, giving the words his own slant.

Scarecrow was not an individual who was burdened by inhibitions. He'd taken control for a reason and it wasn't to chat about the Batman. He straddled the Joker's legs and pressed his palm against the clown's chest. There was the suggestion of a steady heartbeat and body heat, even through the layers of clothing. Scarecrow plucked at the material beneath his fingertips. His gaze flicked up to meet the Joker's eyes.

"I think that this is in my way," he announced. The Joker laughed and Scarecrow began to undo buttons and tug off the clown's shirt. The Joker rapidly adapted to the change of situation and helped to shrug off the garment. Beneath, his skin was littered with scars. The most recent, of course, was the gash on his arm. Scarecrow traced a few scars with fascination. Curiosity didn't manifest itself as scientific interest, like it did with Crane. However, it was still an inescapable part of their personalities.

The Joker's body was wiry and lean. Any muscle was an incidental result of the way he drove himself toward other ends. His physique wasn't imposing in the traditional sense, but there was something about him that seemed particularly solid and real. Wherever he was, he automatically became the foreground. Feeling a sudden impulse, Scarecrow leant forward and licked a trail up the Joker's sternum. When he reached the hollow of the throat, he bit down, not hard, but just enough affirm his presence. He drew back slightly to view the Joker's expression. The Joker's grin was as sharp as one of his knives. Scarecrow smirked back.

The Joker leant forward, propping himself up on one arm, and ran a finger down the buttons of Scarecrow's shirt, tracing a similar path down the other villain's sternum. "You too," he instructed.

Scarecrow grudgingly allowed it, enticed by the idea of closer contact. The Joker's movements were extremely nimble, his fingers negotiating the small buttons on the shirt with ease. This drew Scarecrow's interest more than a simple display of brute force would have. It was a reminder of the Joker's subtler abilities. Those deft fingers might just as easily be wiring explosives or wielding a knife with that near-surgical finesse.

However, when Scarecrow's shirt slid off his shoulders he couldn't help crossing his arms. Neither he nor Jonathan really approved of their body. It was not the most commanding frame, considering the exceedingly thin build. Ignoring the reaction, Joker skimmed a hand down Scarecrow's flank and traced around the top of his hip bone, bringing his fingers down until they were stopped by the line of the belt. "Appearance means about as much as the 'blah, blah, blah' that people tend to indulge in. Just the same, yours suits you. Scarecrow."

A compliment was not a subtle means of reassurance, but Scarecrow was strangely pleased. It was partly the way the Joker had spoken his name. It had been an insult in Jonathan's childhood and later it was a name that had been screamed in terror. This was different again.

Scarecrow unfolded his arms. "You're being painfully transparent, but still—" he trailed off with a shrug.

The Joker merely smiled one of those knowing little smirks that seemed to suggest that he was the only one who got the joke. Scarecrow regarded the clown for a few moments. He wasn't analysing the options so much as waiting for the next impulse to arrive. This situation was unfamiliar to him, even though he was more in touch with his hindbrain. The Joker's tongue swept out across his lips. Scarecrow's eyes were drawn to the movement.

The motion was a frequent occurrence, but it went largely ignored by Crane and Scarecrow. It was just one more piece of the Joker's erratic and distinctive manner. In this context, however, it drew Scarecrow's thoughts to the last time he had consciously registered the tic. It had been just after the inexplicably requested kiss.

No thought was really required. Scarecrow leant forward to press his lips against the Joker's. It quickly became a matter that involved more teeth than lips, but the aggression was under the surface, just simmering. This wasn't about trading or proving a point, for Scarecrow, this was just for fun. After all, he really didn't have much in the way of inhibition, whether in the context of torturing others with fear or kissing.

Scarecrow pressed forward into the kiss and slowly brought his knee around and up between the Joker's legs. The Joker responded by grabbing his hip and pressing his thumb into the junction between Scarecrow's torso and thigh. There was a major artery and two major veins in that area. It was one of the more dangerous places to get stabbed because of the massive blood loss. Naturally, Scarecrow began to wonder how close the Joker's nearest blade was. He wouldn't be surprised if the Joker had a few stashed in the room within easy reach in case he was attacked during the night.

The fear sharpened all sorts of sensations as adrenaline began to flow through Scarecrow's body. Half-dressed suddenly seemed too dressed. This was not about maintaining as much distance from the situation as possible, quite the reverse. Scarecrow wanted to _experience_. He also wanted to see the Joker naked and vulnerable. Scarecrow's movements were a little jerky, and not quite as graceful as what Jonathan would have managed, as he fiddled with the Joker's pants. The clown took the hint and soon both of them were shedding the remainder of their clothes.

Scarecrow didn't hesitate and grabbed the Joker's obvious arousal. It didn't occur to him to wonder whether the cause was a physical one or one related to their earlier discussion. Instead, Scarecrow tried to remember what he personally liked and stroked accordingly. The situation was novel and he found the Joker's reactions gratifying.

"Mmm, Scarecrow." The words veritably slid from the Joker's throat and a shudder ran through Scarecrow's body at the sound of his name uttered in such a manner. The Joker took the moment of distraction as an opportunity to wrap his fingers around Scarecrow's arousal. Scarecrow moaned; his own hand stilling. This was nothing like dealing with things himself. Whether it was the actual sensations or more the idea of it wasn't clear, but either way Scarecrow was losing control.

There wasn't a particular rhythm to the Joker's movements. Speed and pressure varied in a way that set Scarecrow on edge. The hand that was supporting his weight on the bed clutched at the covers and his head hung forward. The sheer unpredictability was messing with his head.

Through half-lidded eyes Scarecrow watched the smug expression on the clown's face. Upon noticing Scarecrow's attention the Joker tilted his head upward to bring his lips closer to Scarecrow's ear.

"Scarecrow."

The way he practically purred the name and the subsequent stroke of his hand pulled Scarecrow over the edge. Scarecrow jolted forward in the Joker's grip, spilling over the clown's hand and uttering a half-feral sound of satisfaction. Despite the pleasure working its way through his body, Scarecrow felt oddly cheated. At that moment he decided that he wanted to make the damn clown fall apart completely.

Let Crane compete with the Joker on an intellectual level, Scarecrow dealt with gut instincts and inescapable responses. It was one of the reasons that he liked fear so much. It came from the hindbrain and overwhelmed all thought. Pure fear could even turn off the continuous stream of words or images that people thought in. What was left was something that expressed itself in far less sophisticated ways.

He couldn't get fear right now, but he could break the Joker's paradoxical self-control. Scarecrow shifted down the bed until he was settled down between the Joker's legs. He couldn't see the clown's expression, but he somehow knew that there would be an enquiring look on that ruined face.

Scarecrow ran his fingertips lightly up the Joker's erection. The sensitivity would be increased considering the duration of his arousal state. Scarecrow blinked at the piece formal knowledge before allowing himself a slow smirk. Jonathan had studied medicine, and consequently, basic anatomy and physiology. Theoretical knowledge wasn't nearly as useful as practical knowledge here, but it was certainly better than nothing.

Scarecrow had quickly decided that he wasn't going to simply imitate. He was going to bring a new dimension to this… whatever-it-was. The bed creaked slightly as Scarecrow shifted his weight to his forearms. Then with slow deliberate movements, he leant down and ran his tongue up the side of the Joker's erection. The indrawn breath from the Joker wasn't quite a laugh, but it was clear that the clown had not been expecting it.

Working off instinct, Scarecrow sucked lightly at the tip. Then he tried to move down further, sucking a little harder. It was a limited success, though he wasn't able to accommodate as much of the Joker as he'd have liked. Still, it was clearly having an effect because when Scarecrow slid his head up and down a couple of times, the clown threaded his hand through dark hair. Scarecrow was reasonably sure it was unconscious. Regardless, he was not going to be controlled so he froze and did his best to snarl around his mouthful. The Joker uttered an oddly pitched sound of frustration and buried his hand in the bed covers.

Scarecrow would have smirked, but instead brought his hand forward to reach what he couldn't with his lips. This resulted in a reasonably efficient rhythm. Scarecrow was working off the responses he generated. While his inexperience annoyed him, he doubted the Joker was any more familiar with the situation, or more importantly, with the sensations. Because of this, it wasn't long before Scarecrow could tell that the Joker was close. He drew his head back slowly, ignoring the inarticulate sound of protest. Then he darted forward and sank his teeth into the Joker's thigh, hard enough to taste blood. At the same instant he gave a particularly firm stroke.

The Joker's hips jerked upward and a sound that was partway between a growl and a moan was strangled in the back of his throat. Scarecrow felt him finish and the dark haired villain smirked around the flesh caught between his teeth. Whatever Jonathan's cautious opinions regarding the Joker, there was clearly a masochistic streak in the clown.

Scarecrow released the Joker and wiped his hand absently on the bedcovers. He swiped his tongue across the teeth-marks he had left, though he couldn't have said why he did it. It just felt appropriate. He also took a moment to admire the glazed expression on the Joker's face. It was rapidly melting away to be replaced by a sharper, more typical expression. An expression of recent pleasure was nothing like fear, but Scarecrow still found it satisfying to watch.

He crawled up beside the Joker's prone form. His face hovered above the Joker's unpainted visage for a moment. It was strange not having their respective faces between them. Then the Joker's hand snapped upward before Scarecrow could do more than tense. But it wasn't a direct attack. Instead, the Joker wove his hand through Scarecrow's hair and brought him down for a kiss. For a moment Scarecrow was entirely focused on quelling his instinct to lash out. He had expected an attack and a fight-and-flight response had nearly taken over. It took him a few seconds to respond, but the kiss was very pleasant—flavoured with the taste of Scarecrow's flare of fear and the Joker's blood.

They both drew back for breath. Scarecrow scowled down at the Joker. "You did that on purpose," he accused.

"Well I didn't do it by accident. Fun though, wasn't it?"

Scarecrow huffed, unwilling to answer. The Joker may have liked pain, but he also seemed to know exactly how Scarecrow reacted to fear, even his own.

The Joker continued when he didn't get a reply. "It's all about chaos, Scarecrow. You _get_ instinct, that's good, but even you seem to get hung up on responding and losing control."

"Don't wreck gratification with philosophy, clown. You're talking to the wrong person."

"I know exactly who I'm talking to."

Scarecrow tried to search the Joker's face for meaning. It wasn't any easier without the greasepaint. "Fine. I'm going to sleep now. I don't really care what you do."

The Joker giggled. "There are so many things I could do to prove you wrong and I wouldn't even need to set fire to anything."

Scarecrow found himself grudgingly amused. "Then I supposed you'd better sleep here too—not that you've ever needed an invitation," he added darkly.

The Joker smiled. His face was still eerily caught between looking too human and entirely inhuman, but that was hardly going to keep Scarecrow awake. Nightmares were his forte.


	10. Chapter 10

It was Crane who awoke. He spent the next few minutes trying to organise last night's events between Scarecrow and the Joker. It wasn't that he had blacked-out or been pushed aside, he had simply directed his attention elsewhere. A conversation regarding his most unpleasant defeat at the hands of the Bat was not something he wanted to listen in on. Similarly, he had had a vague suspicion about what Scarecrow had wanted and Crane refused to participate. There was no question about trying to prevent Scarecrow either. After dosing himself with toxin, Crane did not want to get into an internal struggle. Besides, Scarecrow had helped to keep him relatively calm during the experiment and it would be petty to try to thwart him now.

Still, Crane was not pleased. Fragments of memories slid together into an ever more distasteful picture. Crane's lips thinned in disapproval. He turned his head to look around cautiously and exhaled with relief as he noted the Joker's absence. At least there were small mercies.

Crane retrieved his glasses, rose from the bed and went to the bathroom. There he washed his hands thoroughly. Then he brushed his teeth. Extremely thoroughly. He took a moment to glare at his reflection. If the mirror had any sense of dramatic propriety it would have cracked. Instead, the aluminium backing merely reflected his expression.

Crane sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses up slightly. He would talk with Scarecrow later. Neither was currently in the mood for discussion. The doctor resigned himself to the Joker's presence and made his way to the kitchen. The sounds of rustling packaging gave away the clown's location.

In the kitchen, the Joker was eating handfuls of cereal straight from a packet. He had also taken the opportunity to repaint his face. Ever the psychiatrist, Crane could not help but wonder what his exact face-painting habits were and what they signified.

"Morning, doc," the Joker greeted Crane through a mouthful of cereal. The doctor assumed that he was doing it to be deliberately unpleasant.

"Good morning." Crane paused for a moment to regard the scene. "For some reason I think this would be less incongruous if that cereal was mostly sugar and had cartoon pictures on the box in garish colours."

The Joker held the box at arm's length as if seeing it for the first time. The design could roughly be described as sensible. Words like 'essential vitamins' and 'wholegrain' were printed neatly on the front. The Joker shrugged. "It's the only type you had and food is food. It's not important."

"I see. If it doesn't bleed or catch fire it doesn't merit your consideration."

"That's an oversimplification."

"Oh?" Crane enquired.

"Cereal can catch fire."

Crane gave the Joker a flat look. Then he turned around and left the kitchen. He was still agitated over the state of things and it wasn't as if the doctor had never skipped a meal. If he could agree with the clown about anything, it would be the unimportance of food.

"Hey, where are you going, doc?" the Joker asked in a manner that mostly resembled a petulant child.

"Chemistry," the ex-psychiatrist called out. He didn't bother to turn around or elaborate.

Once in his lab, Crane took a deep breath. The ordered workspace made him feel significantly better. His briefcase was still resting on the bench-top. Beside it, his most current notebook lay closed. On the cover a pen lay precisely perpendicular to the book's spine.

Crane placed a hand on the top of his briefcase. The mask was inside. He frowned to himself and placed everything to one side. Then he got out the required reagents for producing toxin. He stared at the assorted chemicals for a moment. They looked so innocuous. It never failed to amaze the doctor how rearranging bonds and reacting substrates could produce profoundly fascinating and variable results. If people wanted miracles, all they had to do was look to the molecular level of things.

Crane did not feel like synthesising toxin at this point. Instead he selected a couple of his more capricious reagents that were prone to decay. He would conduct some simple analysis to produce a reasonable estimate of their shelf-lives. It was laboratory grunt-work, but soothing in its own way.

As Crane became more absorbed in the process, and less prone to ire, Scarecrow's presence gradually strengthened. His presence went from a low background level to acquiring a sense of looking over Crane's shoulder.

While keeping clear focus on the task before him, Crane addressed his counterpart. 'We were playing a ridiculous game of that clown's own devising. It wasn't ideal, but to an extent, it worked. Then you had to go outside the established order to pursue pointless gratification.'

_Look Jonathan, how long do you think he'd have let an 'established order' last? The Joker lives for chaos and meeting him on his own terms might be a good idea in the long run._

Crane snorted. 'That's a very clever justification for doing just precisely what you wanted to.'

_I'm not trying to pretend otherwise. You know what I am. _

'Yes. You're a part of me.' Crane sighed. 'Perhaps I just don't like the idea that a part of me wants to pursue those sorts of things with that irksome clown.'

_We agreed long ago that it was pointless to fight against each other._

'Indeed. Whatever game he's playing is sure to be underpinned with chaos in some way, so perhaps this move of yours wasn't entirely detrimental.'

There was a natural lull while they both collected their thoughts. Finally Scarecrow spoke up. _Jonathan?_

'Yes?'

_Were you around much last night? I wasn't focused internally and I was wondering how you…found things._

Crane paused and looked up from his titration. There was, of course, no reason to look up as Scarecrow wasn't actually there. However, it felt appropriate and it helped Crane concentrate on the question. The question itself was an odd one, but Scarecrow seldom asked things without a reason.

At that precise moment the Joker wandered into the lab. Crane had no desire to participate in two simultaneous conversations and went back to titrating. He was approaching the chemical reaction's tipping point anyway. Scarecrow also fell silent, though he hovered in the background of their shared consciousness.

The Joker paced around a bit and poked at pieces of equipment. In a way, it was more distracting than conversation would have been. If the clown was just talking, Crane could have ignored him. This way there was a nagging sense that the Joker would break something or find some volatile and toxic chemicals to wreck havoc with. Crane doubted that the clown would be at all fazed by acid burns or carcinogens.

"Will you please just be still?" Crane snapped after about five minutes.

The Joker giggled and sat on the work bench that ran along the opposite wall from where Crane was working. There was less than a minute's peace before the Joker began swinging his legs and hitting the bench's support beams with his heels. He hummed a bit before uttering a rhyme in a sing-song voice. "Jonny drank the goblet dry and Jonny is no more. What he thought was H2O was H2SO4."

Crane turned around and raised an eyebrow. "While I admire your ability to be casually menacing, can you go and find some other way to occupy yourself?"

Crane turned back to his retort stand. "Honestly, who would be stupid enough to keep sulphuric acid in a drinking vessel?" he murmured to himself.

The Joker snorted and stood up. He walked up behind Crane and peered over the doctor's shoulder. "Have you ever thought of working together?"

The comment was unexpected. Crane's answer, however, was automatic. "No. Our goals are completely divergent. You want attention and I want to progress with my research."

The Joker let the 'attention' comment slide. It was mostly true, after all. "Really? _All_ you want to do is to research. So riding around on Fear Night was…?"

Crane held back a grimace. Of course the Joker would know about that, he just hoped the clown was unaware of the taser-related events that brought his rampage to a premature halt. The doctor once again turned aside from his analysis to face the Joker. This was beyond simple distraction. The Joker knew just how informative conversation could be to a trained psychiatrist. He knew that Crane would take the opportunity to talk if there was even the remotest chance of uncovering answers. More than that, he knew exactly the sorts of topics that would draw the doctor's attention.

"I could easily write that off as Scarecrow's influence. He was the one 'riding around', as you put it," Crane began.

"You're not going to though."

Crane maintained eye contact and the Joker noticed a flicker behind the doctor's eyes that indicated that Scarecrow was also paying attention to the conversation. "No, I'm not going to say that it was just Scarecrow having his fun. I was in the periphery that night and I did enjoy it. Seeing the streets filled with the product of my toxin, watching countless citizens fall to their most primal response…" Crane trailed off and shook his head slowly. His focus was elsewhere and a faint smile hovered on his lips.

It was only when the Joker began to speak again that Crane was brought out of his musings. The clown's voice had picked up a soothing cadence that complemented his unique inflection. It had to have been intentional and Crane found himself listening carefully without a clear sense of what drew his focus. "The scientist can hide behind his work; call it 'the truth' and pretend that it isn't _him_. An artist like me has nowhere to hide. What I do and what I am… I don't need to pretend that they're two separate things. I can't always tell if you're pretending or not."

"I am a scientist first and I have nothing more than a vague indifference to art. Science is the truth of reality, the method by which we can understand it. Art's place is to remind us what it is to be human and frankly, I've never seen the use of that. As for pretending, you only need to look at Scarecrow to see that I'm not."

Here the Joker smiled broadly. "But that depends, doesn't it? Who's who? Which is what? I know you two have these little identity issues. A pair of glasses isn't going to stop things blurring. Scarecrow doesn't always wear his mask and the doctor likes the raw fear too. Same but different… but how different? Or perhaps just the same?"

Crane gave his own cold little smile. "Now you see why I find psychiatry so fascinating."

The Joker laughed. "That's a _good_ answer. It's not a _helpful_ answer, but it's a good one. Here's the thing though. You're not happy about what me and Scary got up to last night and that's _interesting_."

Crane refused to be provoked. He gave the Joker a mild look. "I've already had this conversation."

It took a less than a second for the Joker to catch Crane's meaning, but the moment of hesitation pleased the ex-psychiatrist greatly.

"So you and Scary kissed and made up? That still doesn't cover the differences thing."

Crane grimaced at the turn of phrase and inwardly Scarecrow bristled too. "How Scarecrow and I function together is the product of half a lifetime. I'm not going to explain the intricacies of it to you."

The Joker's eyes narrowed. "Maybe you don't have to, doc."

Crane felt rather uncomfortable pinned by the Joker's searching look, but the ex-psychiatrist would sooner die than show it.

Crane cleared his throat. "Since you seem intent on distracting me with conversation, there is one thing that I would like to discuss with you."

"Only one? Wouldn't you like to know about my troubled childhood or early traumatic events, doc?" The Joker accepted the change of topic without missing a beat, his demeanour lightening considerably.

"Forgive me for not appreciating your wonderful story-telling skills, but I think it's safe to assume that I already know as much about your late past as you do," Crane replied calmly.

The Joker broke out into a fit of giggles. The psychiatrists at Arkham never called him out like that. Admittedly he usually spun better bait to pass the time, but even that might not have worked on Crane. Despite everything the Joker was capable of, both brilliant and terrible; he had a feeling that the doc genuinely held him in disdain. Sure the ex-psychiatrist was fascinated and Scarecrow was definitely drawn to him, but there was this underlying touch of scorn that the Joker found absolutely hilarious.

"Okay, I'll play, what do you want to 'discuss'?"

Crane maintained a neutral expression as he spoke. "I recently synthesised a new toxin variant. I can guarantee its safety as much as any other formula I use and I would like to see how you respond to it."

The Joker's expression twisted into a parody of deep consideration. "What's the guarantee?"

"It's the same sort of guarantee as before, Joker. It won't be lethal unless the dose is too high. It wears off."

The Joker's smile widened. Crane gazed back steadily and let the silence stretch.

"If it's new, how can you make a guarantee?" the Joker finally enquired. Inwardly, Crane cursed. The Joker was smart enough to have worked things out and he clearly just wanted to hear it said aloud. And he only wanted that because Crane did not want say it. Unfortunately, in this instance the clown held all the figurative cards.

Crane sighed. "Scarecrow and I tested it on ourselves," he admitted. He did not add that this ensured its safety, as he knew that was not what the Joker was really interested in.

"Really now?" the clown asked with mock surprise. "I wondered what had gotten Scarecrow so riled up."

"Enough games, Joker."

"Everything's a game."

Crane tried hard not to glare, though the muscles in his jaw tensed.

"So what makes this variant so… special?" the Joker asked.

Crane had a flash of inspiration. He allowed a small smirk to cross his face. "Why not let it be a surprise?"

The Joker stared hard at the doctor, this time genuinely giving the matter consideration. Crane held the clown's gaze. "Though I'm going to have to insist on restraints. I would not do for things to get, unpleasant, shall we say."

The Joker grinned. "It sounds like you've got some very specific things in mind."

"I'm willing to trade for it," Crane admitted reluctantly. Whatever insanity the Joker demanded would be worth it. The new compound would be able to pluck things directly from his subject's warped mind. A sufficiently high dose might even render him more cooperative during the session.

"Just one question, doc."

"What?" Crane asked.

"That's my price. I'll just ask you one question after this little experiment. I mean, you can even try lying, but shrink or not, I'll know," the Joker explained conversationally, "and it's certainly a good idea to trade honestly with me."

Crane stared. This was more ridiculous than his very first request for a kiss. "What question?" he asked warily.

The Joker's smile was wide enough to pull at his scars. "Why not let it be a surprise?" he asked in as even a tone as possible. As soon as he finished speaking he broke out into discordant, high-pitched laughter.

'He can't be making it this easy,' Crane addressed Scarecrow.

_Maybe it's because of last night._

Crane grimaced. 'I don't think so. I think he's playing at something.'

_You heard him, Jonathan—he's always playing at something._

Crane wondered what question could be important enough to merit the trade. If the clown could tell if someone was lying, why not simply ask the question without a trade? It occurred to Crane that the Joker was simply trying to rattle him, or even that he was just being unpredictable for the sake of it. Still, Crane felt the shape of something here and it was frustratingly positioned just at the edge of his perception.

"Alright Joker, you have a deal."

The clown had recovered from his laughing fit and wore a satisfied smirk. Neither villain attempted a handshake.


	11. Chapter 11

Crane finished tightening the rope around the Joker's right wrist. It bothered him that he didn't have standard medical straps to use and had to rely on rope. It was crude and somehow diminished the scientific nature of the experiment. Still, restraints of some form were probably necessary. The new toxin variant was not something the Joker would manage to shrug off, or so Crane hoped.

The doctor began tying the Joker's other wrist to the wooden arm of the living room chair. The restraints were mostly a precaution. He was only tying down the Joker's arms. The non-standard rope meant that any individual with sufficient patience and experience would be able to free themselves eventually. Under ordinary circumstances, Crane would not expect rope to hold the Joker for more than a few minutes. However, depending on the intensity of the fear response, it was unlikely that he'd be able to free himself while hallucinating.

Crane stepped back when he had finished. The Joker tested the ropes with a quick tug. His gaze flicked up to Crane's and he smirked. The expression made Crane tense, though he couldn't have pinpointed why.

"Not a bad job on the knots, doc. Do you do this sort of thing often?"

Crane kept his expression neutral despite the irreverent tone. He disliked the way the Joker could make light of any situation, especially one involving fear toxin. Anyone else would be getting at least a little nervous. "You get to ask a question afterwards," Crane reminded his subject.

The Joker's smirk became even more pronounced, his lip curling slightly. Crane went to retrieve the concentrated sample of his new toxin and the rest of the required equipment from his lab. It was a necessary step in the procedure. He told himself that it had nothing to do with wanting to escape the Joker's presence for a moment. Only the Joker could be more intimidating when tied down.

It was almost surprising that the Joker was still restrained when Crane returned. Then again, the clown was trying to be cooperative. Even so, one of his feet was tapping arrhythmically against the carpet and his hands were clenching and unclenching against the arms of the chair. The hyperactivity intrigued Crane and for a moment he was tempted to sit back and wait to see how long it would take before the Joker became restless enough to unbind himself. However, fear was the priority, always, so Crane began preparing a somewhat diluted solution of toxin.

The Joker ceased his fidgeting to watch the process. The doctor always seemed to lose himself in these little moments of science. The rigidity never left his posture, but he had a certain grace and he lost any trace of self-consciousness. The Joker found it intriguing.

"High dose, huh?" the clown commented.

Crane regarded the two-molar solution he had prepared. It was four times what he had experienced himself. It was still well below the lethal dose but… "You could say that."

The doctor turned away from the table and his briefcase to address the Joker properly. "The effects should certainly be interesting."

"You're really keen to dis_sect_ my mind, aren't you?"

Crane gave the Joker a measured look, but he couldn't quite keep the smirk off his face. He blamed Scarecrow's lingering presence. "Dissect? How morbid, think of it more as… vivisection."

The Joker chuckled. "Not bad. I don't know about being scary, but you've got creepy down pretty well."

"Hmm." Crane couldn't quite decide if that was complimentary and went back to drawing up the solution into a disposable syringe. The Joker remained unexpectedly silent, though Crane could feel him watching. The doctor flipped his notebook open and uncapped a pen. He cast one last look at the mask that was lying in his open briefcase. Scarecrow was hanging around right in the forefront of their mind, but he wasn't attempting to gain control. It was a little odd. There was an oppressive feeling in the air. Crane was almost certain that he would uncover something concrete today. The strain of toxin, the level of the dose—even Scarecrow, who cared little for the scientific process, could feel something significant about this.

"Are you ready?" Crane asked, approaching his subject.

"Are you?"

Crane hesitated. The clown's ability to pick up on doubts and read the indistinct feeling of tension in the room was unsettling. For a moment he was going to brush off the question with a brisk 'of course', but that seemed inappropriate. The Joker was a threatening individual and that was pure fact. There would be no use in trying to deny that fact either to himself or the man before him. Crane knew what he was dealing with and he wasn't going to pretend otherwise. However, the most disconcerting thing about the question was that it had almost sounded concerned. Crane had no idea what the Joker was trying to achieve with that piece of manipulation.

"I'm as ready as the situation permits," Crane affirmed.

The Joker nodded slowly and turned his wrist outward to expose the crook of his elbow, barely hampered by the rope. He glanced up at the doctor and smiled. Crane stepped forward and delivered the injection. The Joker's eyes slid closed and he let his head droop forward. Crane took a step back as he waited for the toxin to take effect. He had learned his lesson from the last time and even with the Joker restrained, the doctor wasn't going to take any chances. He would observe. It would be enough.

Outwardly, the Joker's eerie stillness was the totality of his response. He almost appeared unconscious. Crane debated whether he should step forward to check his vital signs. It would be out of curiosity rather than concern and it would be something quantitative that he could record in his results.

The Joker's head whipped up suddenly. The doctor took a step back, unable to help himself. The Joker's eyes were unnaturally bright and lacking the characteristic glaze that the fear toxin should be promoting. The sheer intensity of the expression was unlike anything he had seen from the clown. No, that was incorrect, Crane had seen a similar look the first time that he had brought up Batman in the Joker's presence. That had been unsettling, but this expression was beyond disturbing.

But did that meant the clown was seeing the Bat? That couldn't be right. The Joker didn't fear his nemesis, far from it. Crane thought about his own hallucination of the Batman. Chemistry might be surprising at times, but there was no way that Crane had managed to synthesis a compound that just produced visions of Batman. That shouldn't be possible.

The Joker was smiling now. This was one of the few times that his smile actually reached his eyes. Despite the evidence of genuine delight, it wasn't a pleasant expression. It mostly made him look unstable.

Then Crane noticed an interesting detail that caused his wary irritation to fade. The Joker was sweating a bit and a slight shake had developed in his left hand. The physical signs of fear where present. That meant the compound was working on his autonomic nervous system, at least in the periphery. Maybe the mind just needed an opportunity to catch up. Crane nearly took a step forward to get a closer look, but he held himself back. This was no time for sloppy procedure.

The clown murmured something. It sounded suspiciously like 'Batsy'. Crane narrowed his eyes. What was going _on_ in the Joker's mind?

"You're getting better. I didn't hear you come in," the Joker addressed the empty air a few paces in front of him. The glee in his voice was evident.

"I get that you're not such a great talker, but it's rude to ignore someone when they're talking," the Joker continued.

Crane was surprised by the one-sided conversation. Surely the Joker knew that he was hallucinating? He usually seemed good at keeping a grip on reality when he was dosed. Was it the concentration of the dose or was his unusual attachment to Batman impairing his judgement. The single-minded focus in his expression could indicate that other details, such as the true circumstances, were deemed unimportant side-notes. If so, then having such a significant blind-spot was fascinating.

"Bats? Hello, Bats?"

The Joker froze. His expression transformed into one of horror. Crane drew a sharp breath. The expression was exquisite. This was beyond all expectations. Scarecrow's consciousness was almost overlaying his own as they watched genuine fear cross their subject's face.

Crane barely registered the fact that his other self was speaking. _Scream, clown. Damn it, scream._

"No!" the Joker yelled and tugged viciously at the rope. The fibres cut into his skin, but if he was aware of it, he didn't care.

"That's not my knife—I didn't—I'd _never_! Get up, damn you! Stop bleeding!"

Crane's eyes widened. Oh. Now that was interesting. So that's why he was seeing the Bat. In the background, Crane could hear Scarecrow chuckling. The sound was dark and unpleasant, but it still brought a smile to the doctor's lips.

The Joker jerked his elbows back and bent his wrists. The movement appeared mostly instinctive and it allowed his fingertips access to the knots. He wasn't even looking at the rope, not that that would have been any help considering the hallucinations. He worked by feel and it didn't seem as if he was paying all that much attention to what he was doing. So, the Joker could undo knots on autopilot, Crane felt that he should have guessed.

The ropes fell to the floor in mere seconds and the Joker practically leapt to his feet. Instead of attacking or running he crouched down beside a singularly unremarkable piece of the floor. Crane could surmise the nature of the Joker's participation in the hallucination. The clown's hands fluttered over the empty air, maybe checking for vital signs or the supposed knife-wound itself. Crane was fascinated, but he felt a flicker of unease. Having the Joker free right now was probably not a good thing. He dismissed the thought as the clown began to speak again.

"It's okay… get up… stop it… this is _not_ funny…" the Joker mumbled. A few giggles actually managed to force their way through the Joker's panic. The sound was nervous, perhaps even afraid.

Crane's smile was cold and satisfied as he watched the Joker finally being affected by fear. This was beyond anything he had hoped. The core of the fear was so simple, something that Crane should have predicted, but there was also something so elegant about it. This was the significance of fear. This was the insight that the intrinsic, primal emotion revealed about higher function. The Joker had never looked so uncertain, so _lost_. If only he would scream.

Even the strength of the dose was not enough to ensnare the Joker indefinitely. Until a compound was properly concentrated, it would eventually be cleared from the receptors it bound to in the brain. Saturating the system with fear toxin was the only way to inhibit the clearance pathway and cause permeant damage.

It was obvious the second the Joker regained lucidity. It was the moment the laughter began. The sound was ragged and erratic, but it persisted. Then it grew louder and harsher. It became wild and discordant until the Joker was shaking again, but this time just with the force of his mirth. Then right at the peak of the sound his laughter stopped as suddenly as if someone had flipped a switch. There was silence in the room.

Crane's feeling of unease returned. The situation suddenly felt very dangerous. The Joker got to his feet, taking his time and stretched out his neck and shoulders. After this leisurely pause he finally turned to look at Crane. The Joker was smiling. He did not look pleased. Crane found himself pressing his back to the wall without a clear memory of when he had stepped back. This no longer felt like a game or a trade.

The Joker took a step forward. His smile never wavered but Crane was watching the Joker's eyes. Whatever emotion, real or feigned, that was present in the Joker's eyes was overshadowed by a look that Crane could only describe as insanity. In a moment of bright clarity the ex-psychiatrist realised that the Joker wasn't upset about showing induced fear or even about demonstrating something that could be construed as weakness. No, the Joker's rage was entirely related to having seen a glimpse of Batman. It might have been the disappointment that it was only a hallucination, or maybe just the reminder that his nemesis was currently occupied with the police. The point was that it was the Batman, perhaps the _absence_ of Batman, that had brought the most volatile aspects of the Joker to the forefront. The vigilante was a destabilising influence for the Joker, at least, when he wasn't present.

Crane had no time to enjoy the feeling of learning something about the Joker. Terror overwhelmed every possible response. This situation wasn't simply dangerous, it was deadly. The fear was more acute than when Crane's mind had produced an image of the Joker under the influence of toxin. Now of course, it was horribly real and the sense of fear was produced wholly by his body without synthetic assistance.

The Joker looked like he was out for blood. Crane couldn't think. There were no options sleeting through his mind. In some ways it was fortunate that Crane had recently exposed himself to his toxin, because Scarecrow was distinct enough to take control without hesitation. Had Crane been in any reasonable frame of mind, he would have screamed at Scarecrow not to do anything stupid that would provoke the Joker further. As it was, Crane could only watch as the Joker stalk toward them.


	12. Chapter 12

Scarecrow didn't pause to think. There was toxin, including the aerosol version lying in the briefcase. The instinct was to arm himself. He lunged to the side, but the Joker was faster. They crashed into one another, the Joker twisting at the last minute to exert force on Scarecrow's outflung arm.

The dark haired villain howled in pain and clutched at his arm. The pain was a dull ache but the intensity was staggering. The Joker was occupied with flinging the briefcase across the room and ignored Scarecrow's seething.

_That clown broke my arm!_ Scarecrow raged.

'No he hasn't. It's the shoulder.'

_He dislocated my shoulder?_

'Not that bad. Subluxation, not full dislocation.'

_Jonathan?_ Scarecrow was worried that Jonathan wasn't speaking in whole sentences. The pain must have been getting to him. _I can't fight like this._

'I'm working on it just… blunt force applied anteriorly. That should work, I—you do it… please.'

Only through sharing the same mind did Scarecrow get the full sense of what Jonathan was saying. The 'please' alone was enough to rattle him.

_Brace yourself, _Scarecrow murmured.

Scarecrow approached the nearest corner of a wall. He only took a second to confirm the angle with Crane before he slammed his left shoulder into it. The pain in his realigning joint made him cry out and he desperately strangled a sob in the back of his throat. Showing weakness now would be a really bad idea. That thought barely had time to form before the Joker grabbed his undamaged right shoulder, a small mercy that was probably unintentional, and spun him around. Scarecrow's back hit the wall and he winced as the impact made his left shoulder spasm painfully. The clown was immediately in his personal space. The Joker had acquired a blade from somewhere and the cool metal was pressed against Scarecrow's cheek.

"So the doc's run away and left you to face me. Should I be surprised?"

Fear and anger warred against the ache. Scarecrow's grimace became a snarl. "It's not like that! I'm here by my choice," he spat.

"Oh that's right, you enjoy fear." The Joker's tone was condescending. He leaned to one side to press against Scarecrow's left shoulder. "Are we still having fun?"

"Get the hell off me," Scarecrow managed to choke out while holding back a scream.

"Yeah, this is fun," the Joker continued as if Scarecrow hadn't spoken.

Scarecrow curled his right hand and swung out at the clown's jaw. The strike actually managed to land. The Joker must not have expected it. He staggered back a couple of steps, laughing abrasively. Scarecrow wasted no time in lunging forward. He landed a punch to the Joker's gut. However, he drew back as a flick of the Joker's knife opened a shallow gash along his arm. So that was why the Joker had allowed him to get close. The nearest stash of toxin was in the bedroom and the Joker was blocking the door.

'Stop agitating the injury and think for a moment,' Crane protested. 'This confrontation is clearly what he wants. He's not even trying.'

_I don't care. I'm going to tear his—_

'If you can't keep control, I'm—'

Scarecrow did not like to be interrupted, even by Jonathan, so he ignored his other self in favour of charging at the Joker. He didn't pay the slightest bit of attention to Crane cursing him for stupidity.

Stupid wasn't the same as impulsive, though there was a fine line. Scarecrow turned at the last moment to drop his left shoulder back and he made a grab for the Joker's wrist. They crashed together again. Scarecrow narrowly avoided the edge of the blade. The momentum threw them against the opposite wall. The collision jolted Scarecrow's shoulder and the Joker's head cracked against the wall. Crane took the moment of distraction to fight for control with Scarecrow.

The pain and Crane's determination meant that it only took a few seconds. But it was only when he surfaced that Crane realised that those seconds would be more than enough time for the Joker to recover. With trepidation, he glanced at the Joker's face. The clown was smirking at him, his eyes half-lidded. There wasn't even a trace of malice in the expression. Despite everything, it appeared that he was still just playing.

"Is everything some sort of sick game to you?" Crane hissed.

"Yeah, pretty much." Without further ado, the Joker darted forward and kissed Crane.

The psychiatrist recoiled, but found himself tangled together with Joker.

Crane tilted his head away from the Joker's advances. "I am not Scarecrow and this does not interest me," he stated flatly. He also tried to ignore his elevated heart-rate.

"I know who's who. You two are pretty obvious about it, doc. But really, I think you are interested. A lot of fear's been soaking into this room. Also with the pain and rage, it's not good to hold those sorts of things back."

Crane stared hard into the Joker's smirking face. The Joker rested a hand on Crane's shoulder. It was the left shoulder, but the main threat was the edge of the knife blade that ended up resting against the side of doctor's neck. Crane had forgotten that the clown was still armed. The move had to have been intentional. It seemed that it was always like this with the Joker. There were no half measures and everything had to be on the edge. It was almost as if…

"That's it!" The vehemence of Crane's exclamation was surprising. He was not prone to outbursts and even a well-concocted batch of fear toxin only drew a satisfied smirk from him. However, in his current frame of mind his thoughts were sparking in such a way that he fancied that he could feel the action potentials racing down his neurons.

"Huh?"

"I knew it wasn't plain masochism. It wouldn't be that simple with you. You're drawn to the _intensity_. Pain, anger, even things like joy or fear would probably work. No wonder you obsess over the Batman. He could be the personification of intensity and you certainly seem to have the knack for drawing out the worst in him." Crane spared a brief look toward the freshest set of wounds across the Joker's face. According to the clown, they had been inflicted by his favourite foe. He recaptured the Joker's amused gaze.

"I'm right, aren't I?" Crane asked with quiet confidence. Despite his calm tone, there was something indefinite in the doctor's expression that suggested hunger. At this point it was hard to distinguish between intellectual hunger and something rather more visceral. It was easy enough to blame that on Scarecrow's proximity.

The Joker just chuckled. "Cute little theories aren't going to get you anywhere with me. We've been through this. I don't fit on any of your scales or in any of your neat categories."

"It isn't a category, clown. It's an observation about your behaviour. You don't do anything by half measures and you crave that same intensity from your environment."

The Joker shrugged. "Maybe, but I think Scarecrow hit a little closer to the mark."

"_What_?"

"Yeah, he said I enjoyed being difficult."

Crane's glare could have stripped paint. The Joker just smirked and let the blade in his hand dip. The edge scraped against the side of Crane's throat and he shivered, his chin lifting slightly. Once again he had forgotten about the Joker being armed. It wasn't as if he needed weapons in order to be threatening.

Crane prided himself on his stoicism. But now, fear, dull pain and a lot of anger—the Joker was good at inciting things and it did seem to be purely for his amusement. The anger in particular flashed in Crane again and it twisted together with his fear. This produced some interesting consequences, though the doctor was hardly in a position to analyse the exact nature of the effects.

"Fine, you want to play this unseemly little game of yours?" Crane hissed. He grabbed the Joker's wrist where it was lying on his shoulder and dug his fingers in. He was not going to let the clown play with his fear response like that.

The Joker's smile widened. He splayed his other hand across Crane's hip. Obviously the doctor wasn't about to use his left arm in any strenuous manner. They were both still somewhat tangled from the struggle. Crane only had to lean forward to practically eliminate any space between them. He wasn't going to kiss. It was unhygienic, sentimental, and more the sort of thing that Scarecrow would do, if only so that he could bite.

However, Crane did draw a small amount of enjoyment from having the opportunity to watch the Joker's eyes so closely. Not in all his years as a psychiatrist had he ever encountered such an inscrutable individual. In terms of displaying emotion, psychosis or humanity the Joker's eyes were consistently opaque. It was easy enough to believe that there was nothing at all behind his eyes. That was the fascination.

The Joker slid his hand around to the small of Crane's back and drew him even closer. To an extent, the proximity didn't faze the doctor. He had become somewhat accustomed to this physical nearness with the Joker. The clown didn't seem to have much of an understanding of personal space. Crane still didn't like the idea of being touched, but in some contexts, perhaps, it served a purpose. They were flush against each before the doctor quite realised that this had happened. Crane could also clearly feel that the Joker was just as aroused as he was.

"Just let go." The Joker's expression was indecipherable.

'I wonder what _that_ means,' Crane mused to Scarecrow.

Scarecrow seemed to be more focused on the Joker rather than what his counterpart was saying._ You know, I think that he'd probably let you fuck him._

'What?'

_That intensity thing you were on about, plus I think he's been pushing toward something like this. He only really cares about getting a response._

'I don't care about the reasoning! How is that…activity…anything other than extremely distasteful?'

_Well I could give you my reasoning, but how about power, control?_

Crane would have scowled, had there been anyone to scowl at.

_I know you don't go for this sort of thing, but I think it would be… informative. He wasn't wrong when he accused you of being interested. You could at least let me—_

'I'm inclined to think that you'd go for his throat if I let you back in control.'

Scarecrow gave the impression of shrugging. _It's sort of the same thing._

Crane tried to sort out rationality from a pit of instinct and Scarecrow's desires. The task was mostly beyond him. Scarecrow's thoughts and impulses were as close as when the Joker had been under the influence of the toxin. Despite the situation, Scarecrow wasn't even attempting to vie for control. In fact, he seemed about as interested in Crane's behaviour as the Joker was.

"Don't analyse, just do," the Joker reaffirmed. The Joker trailed his hand down to the front of Crane's pants. The doctor shuddered as fingertips brushed against his clothed erection.

"What the hell do you want from me?" Crane demanded.

"Lots of things, doc. That's the game. But right now, I want you to indulge that dark impulse that I can see lurking behind all that civility."

"You mean Scarecrow?"

The Joker shook his head slowly. "No, doc, we both know it isn't just Scarecrow."

Crane swallowed. There was something strangely tempting about the notion of 'letting go'. The appeal was hard to define. Crane knew that he wasn't repressed, he was just above it. Whether his distraction was related to the prior fear, contrast, power or simply something intoxicating about the Joker himself, was difficult to place.

"Fine," Crane asserted quietly.

Joker turned around obligingly. "_Now_ we're talking."

Scarecrow gave an eerily similar response internally.

Crane's fingers ghosted over the Joker's pants and he unfastened them efficiently. The Joker took the cue and helped pull them down. Crane kicked off his shoes and socks and got himself into a similar state of undress.

Scarecrow had gone completely silent, though his thoughts still leaked through their separate identities. This was about power and control. It was also a game of increasing intensity and increasingly obscure goals. At the same time Crane felt restless. He wanted to pace or scribble furiously in one of his notebooks until every page was covered in his cramped handwriting. Darker things were stirring too. Screams and injections, caustic compounds and aerosols lined up in neat rows in Crane's mind. He thought about his mask and the feel of burlap. Idly, he wondered if this was how Scarecrow felt all the time.

Crane leant flush against the Joker, his lips just behind the clown's ear. "This is going to _hurt_." The phrase was one that Scarecrow had occasionally used with patients back when they still had free reign at Arkham. It was a phrase that had inspired terror and heralded the waking nightmares of their test subjects. It may have been crude drama, but the phrase still tasted of the heady power that he and Scarecrow had once shared.

"Good." The dark tone of the Joker's affirmation didn't contain a trace of apprehension and it sent a shiver up the doctor's spine. Crane didn't even try to untangle the myriad of thoughts that were sparked by that response.

Despite the mutual goading, the doctor in Crane refused to simply brutalise someone for no good reason. Crane knew enough about anatomy to know the possible extent of damage and more importantly, that it wouldn't be all that pleasant for him either. Having nothing particularly appropriate on hand, he settled for saliva and the bare minimum of preparation. The very idea was objectionable, but it was necessary. After his years in medicine, Crane was not squeamish, just fastidious.

As he pressed into the Joker, the clown uttered a sound that was mostly a breathless laugh. For Crane, the sensations were indescribable. Nothing in his experience was comparable to this. It wasn't just the novelty of the physical aspect either. The cocktail of psychological responses was staggering. The events of the past hour had been distilled into their raw affective forms and injected directly into Crane's bloodstream.

The doctor was shaking with the effort of keeping still. Every instinct was clamouring for him to thrust forward savagely and just take. It wasn't some sense of courtesy or concern that held him back. Instead, Crane hated the idea of letting his baser impulses dictate his behaviour.

"Stop trying to control it and just let go," the Joker growled.

It was a demand for action. It was also permission to surrender to primal ferocity. Crane understood that with the Joker, sex would never really be about sex. The doctor's hips snapped forward. There was nothing controlled or planned. This was pure, vicious instinct and it was invigorating.

Crane grabbed the Joker's hips in both hands, oblivious to the warning twinge this produced in his shoulder. His fingertips and blunt nails dug into sinewy flesh. The Joker practically purred at the way that Crane's restraint was cracking under the strain. For his part, the doctor stifled a guttural moan against the Joker's shoulder, revelling in the scent of long-dead fires and muted violence that seemed to cling to the Joker's clothing. A hank of green-tinged hair brushed against Crane's cheek.

Pleasure was sparking down the doctor's nerves and his pulse hammered. The friction was incredible and almost too acute. Another sound tore from Crane's throat. It was almost a growl. He pushed forward as if to eliminate any space between his body and the Joker's.

The Joker was attempting to laugh, but he couldn't quite catch enough breath. The barest flicker of a thought prompted Crane to reach toward the Joker's arousal. The situation may have devolved into turmoil, but a lust for power was something that ran through Crane's instincts as well as his thoughts. The Joker bucked into the tight grip. Wild feeling drowned out any sense of thought. Sensation built and force and pleasure blended together with primal uncontrollable drives. This was true release.

A strong shudder ran through Crane's body as he climaxed. The movement created a shot of pain in his shoulder but it didn't bother him in the least. His hands tightened on the Joker's flesh and it only took a few firm strokes to bring the other to completion as well.

For a moment, all Crane could do was lean against the Joker and pant. When the doctor did pull back, he noted with dull surprise that his legs were unsteady. In contrast, the Joker appeared almost unaffected and merely began tugging his clothes into a semblance of presentability. Fear, injury and sex had left Crane exhausted. After pulling up his pants, he half collapsed into the nearest chair before his shaking legs gave way entirely. The Joker strolled, if a little stiffly, toward a chair across the table. He put an elbow on the table and rested his chin in his hand. He grinned at Crane.

"Do you get it?"

Crane fought against fatigue. He let his head roll to one side so that he could regard the Joker more clearly. "What?"

"That's my question from the trade: do you get it?"

Even a day earlier Crane's first instinct would have been to ask what 'it' was or what the clown was blathering about. Not so at this point. Crane thought about the past hour. He recalled the sheer intensity of fear, pain and rage. He even contemplated the surprisingly cathartic activity that he had just engaged in and the uncontrolled manner in which it had occurred. Almost as an afterthought, Crane considered the past week that had started with the Joker invading his bed and had somehow mutated into this. Crane laughed. It was a controlled, muted sound, but it did hold a degree of amusement.

"Yes," he replied simply.

The Joker's smile had been broad when Crane had laughed, now it appeared almost too wide.

"Don't get too excited. I may understand the joke, but that doesn't mean I find it funny," the doctor clarified.

"But you were laughing."

"Mostly at the situation."

"You don't have much of a sense of humour, do you?"

"That's hardly the point."

The Joker seemed to mull things over for a while. "I think it's more fun this way."

"This way?"

"Uh-huh."

Crane let the subject drop as the Joker didn't seem particularly forthcoming. The doctor was in no condition to engaging in productive conversation. Besides, his arm still needed bandaging. The cut was shallow but infection was a likely danger, considering.


	13. Chapter 13

Crane rose from his chair. He set some water to boil in the kitchen and went to retrieve his first aid kit from the bathroom. The Joker remained sitting. He fiddled with one of his knives but his attention was clearly focused on the doctor. He even went so far as to let his head loll over the back of the chair whenever Crane walked behind him.

Eventually the medical materials were laid out and Crane returned to his seat across from his uninvited guest. The doctor mixed some antiseptic into the bowl of hot water. Twisting his arm around, Crane removed the blood crusting over the wound with a wad of gauze dipped into the solution. On inspection, the wound wasn't particularly deep. Thankfully it wouldn't require stitches.

Crane began to wrap the bandage around his arm. It was not the easiest manoeuvre to undertake one-handed, but he would not under any circumstances ask the Joker for assistance. Crane was contemplated tightening the binding with his teeth when the Joker leant across the table. The knife had been set aside and the doctor managed to control the instinct to flinch. The clown tightened the bandage with surprising efficiency. As he drew back he let his fingertips brush down the inside of Crane's arm. The flexor surface of the arm was a vulnerable place as the nerves and blood vessels ran close to the surface. Crane shot a suspicious look in the Joker's direction, but the clown merely smiled.

Crane was feeling reasonably tolerant toward the Joker at this point, all things considered. Scarecrow, on the other hand, wasn't feeling quite so gracious. Though he couldn't determine the exact cause, the doctor did manage to deduce that his counterpart was not pleased. It was a little disconcerting because his presence felt very close. In these instances, bad moods could be somewhat contagious between the two halves.

'Scarecrow?' Crane hazarded.

There was a shift in Scarecrow's presence, but no reply. It wasn't as if Scarecrow was sulking or deliberately not speaking to him. There were more effective ways of doing that and they mostly involved Scarecrow withdrawing as far from the active consciousness as he could. This was an attempt at containing anger. It wasn't something that Scarecrow was particularly good at.

Crane was jolted out his introspection when the Joker spoke. "You're being pretty quiet there, doc."

"I just don't feel like filling every second with mindless chatter. But don't let that stop you. It usually doesn't."

The Joker feigned a look of deep hurt. "Now that's just hostile. Usually the venom's more affectionate."

Crane flashed an irate look in the Joker's direction before returning to the task of repacking the first aid kit. "Affectionate? I didn't think you were _that_ delusional."

The Joker's expression went a little dark. "Now you're just being clumsy. I also warned you about the whole implying insanity thing."

Crane took a deep breath to compose himself. It was not sensible to bait the clown and it was beneath Crane's dignity to succumb to emotion so readily, let alone emotion that was probably originating from his other half. "I apologise. I must be a little distracted."

The Joker's eyes were narrowed, but now they widened in disbelief. "You apologise? Okay, now that's just… that's just _weird_."

Crane shrugged his right shoulder without looking up from his task.

"I know Scary can have mood swings, but—" the Joker trailed off as he noticed the way Crane's expression tightened minutely. The tell was incredibly subtle but it did not escape the Joker's attention. "So it's Scarecrow who's feeling grumpy," he observed.

The doctor didn't deign to reply.

"Let me talk to him," the Joker prompted.

"I don't think he wants to talk."

The Joker raised an eyebrow. "Sulking?"

"No, not sulking," Crane spoke slowly, almost to himself.

The Joker shrugged. Then with one quick movement drew a knife and buried it in the tabletop a hair's breadth from Crane's hand.

"What the hell are doing?" the doctor shouted.

The Joker watched Crane's expression for a moment and shrugged again. "The fear thing usually works," he stated casually.

Adrenaline surged in Crane's system. He nearly shook with a potent mixture of rage and fear. The doctor bit back an accusation of insanity in favour of glaring and trying to slow his heart rate. The Joker's only response was a few giggles. However, Scarecrow's attention was now fixed on the clown.

'Scarecrow?' Crane tried again.

_Yes, Jonathan? _Scarecrow's tone did not inspire Crane's confidence.

'What exactly is bothering you?'

_The clown wants to talk. I think we should talk._

'I have the strangest sense that that would end rather unfavourably.'

There was a moment of silence from Scarecrow then, _I'll behave._

'Really now?'

_I was already injured once today and I know how well he can fight._

'That didn't stop you before,' Crane pointed out bluntly.

_I didn't feel like talking before._

Crane sighed. He was going to regret this, but he did not want to fight to keep Scarecrow quiescent. Besides, this was better than Scarecrow's badly suppressed anger bleeding into Crane's organised thoughts.

'Well, don't start anything. I've just finished packing up the first aid kit.'

There was a smirk from Scarecrow. He didn't bother to verbalize a response as he gained control.

The Joker was staring intently at the way Scarecrow's smirk slid across the doctor's face. While it was an obvious change in the Joker's opinion, objectively speaking, it was a reasonably subtle difference. It was mostly that the Joker was unusually good at seeing things that were really there.

"Hello, clown," said Scarecrow.

The Joker smiled. "I hope there are no hard feelings about our little tussle."

"I'll get over it."

"A good choice." The underlying threat in the Joker's tone set Scarecrow's teeth on edge, but he stamped down on his aggressive urges. He was here to talk.

"I was pretty impressed by the way you fixed your shoulder up. The doc's know-how and your resilience, I assume," the Joker continued blithely, his gaze wandering over the medical supplies.

"Something like that."

The Joker leant forward and stared hard at Scarecrow's face. "So what's got you so riled up?"

Scarecrow was not the least bit perturbed by the lightning change in the clown's demeanour. He leant froward too, his arms extended across the table. The villains' fingertips almost brushed. "Just because Jonathan's not paying attention, doesn't mean that you can distract me so easily."

"Can you be a bit more specific? There have been a lot of distractions lately." The Joker's gaze dropped down a fraction to focus on Scarecrow's lips. Scarecrow scowled at the implications. It was hard to behave when the Joker was deliberately trying to goad him. Admittedly it was a mild provocation, but then, it didn't take much to annoy the Scarecrow.

"I still don't know what your game is exactly, but I know that you've achieved something here. You've gotten to him," Scarecrow accused.

There was a certain gleam in his eyes as the Joker smirked. "I thought I had. I won't be sure until later."

Scarecrow was seconds away from lunging across the tabletop despite Jonathan's warnings.

"You can attack if you want, I really don't mind," the Joker explained, "but I'm not the only one who's achieved something here."

That made Scarecrow pause.

"Anyway, as much fun as all this has been, keeping below the radar has been a bit… stressful. Batsy is clearly having trouble with the cops, so I'm going to help with that. By the time I'm done with Gotham, allegedly murderous vigilantes won't really be their top priority."

Scarecrow stared hard at the Joker. He suspected there was a punch line to go with the explanation.

"Since _you_ don't seem to want the attention, I'll be out of your hair," the Joker clarified.

"What?"

"Gotham's been _lang_uishing without me and the Bat is probably beside himself with worry." The Joker shook his head sadly. "And when I'm out there being useful, I don't tend to stay in one place for very long. It's just not practical."

Scarecrow and Crane were both stunned. Silence stretched while the shock faded.

'Does that sate your anger, Scarecrow?' Crane enquired.

_I guess so. _Scarecrow actually sounded somewhat put out.

'I think the Joker was right about you and mood swings.'

Scarecrow bristled half-heartedly.

'I have some questions for him. Why don't I talk and give you a chance to brood.'

Scarecrow scowled but acquiesced. It was clear that Jonathan was still a little wound up about him fighting with the Joker. Either that or he was worried about a repeat performance. Scarecrow also didn't make a fuss because he was secretly impressed by the way Jonathan could get nasty without needing to turn things into a physical confrontation.

"That was quick," the Joker commented as he was once again faced with the ex-psychiatrist. "Does it count as a mood swing if you and Scary switch around?"

Crane ignored the Joker's inane question. "So you are actually going to go on your way and leave me in peace?" he asked. Crane couldn't hep but doubt the Joker's sincerity. Things had been steadily approaching some sort of peak and now this? The Joker may be unpredictable, but this was beyond surprising.

The Joker nodded. "If by peace you mean boredom, then yes."

Crane was silent for a moment before he spoke. If the Joker was to be believed, this would be the last chance to ask the most obvious question. Crane did not expect a straightforward answer, but with the Joker, one never knew.

"I know that everything is chaos with you. I know you've been trying to push and twist and _get_ to me. While I don't expect a coherent answer, just what were you trying to achieve here?" the doctor asked.

The Joker smiled. "I'm surprised you haven't worked it out, doc. All this time, you were obsessing about getting me a little closer to fear, your chosen area of _expertise_. Didn't it occur to you that I might want the exact same thing? That mostly I've been interested in brining you a little closer to chaos? It's uh, kind of _arrogant_ to assume that you're the only one who wants to leave a mark."

Crane stared.

"You see, Scarecrow isn't the only one who can remind me of myself. It's one of the reasons that I've left you two mostly intact."

While Crane continued to stare, the Joker rose from his seat. The doctor tried to process the notion of receiving such a direct answer. The shock was so acute that he wasn't even irritated by the comparison. After another moment's hesitation Crane rose too. Escorting the Joker to the door was almost a surreal experience. Even stranger was the absence of serious damage left in the clown's wake.

At the door, the Joker rummaged through his coat and retrieved a small knife. Even the dull lighting in the apartment caused the metal to glint. The Joker took good care of his knives. Crane tensed, but instead of any sort of violent outburst, the Joker spun the knife in his fingers and presented it hilt first. "Here, doc."

Crane regarded the knife dubiously, making no move to take it.

"Come on, it's a gift," the Joker insisted.

Crane raised an eyebrow, but he took the proffered blade. It would probably be a bad idea to rebuff the Joker's…thoughtfulness.

The doctor was about to placed the knife down somewhere when he noticed an important detail. The blade was familiar. It was small and razor sharp so that a patient would barely feel the incision—

"This is the knife I used on you when I was treating your wound," Crane asserted quietly.

The Joker was grinning. "Yep, if I ever need some emergency slicing and dicing, I'll find you."

Crane found that statement somewhat ominous. Only a gift from the Joker could be something simultaneously a promise and a threat. The doctor absently turned the knife over in his hands a few times. He didn't even notice the Joker's scrutiny. This gesture needed a reply. He wasn't going to let the clown know that he'd been taken off guard. Inspiration struck.

Crane put the knife down and went to his laboratory. The Joker tilted his head to one side to watch the doctor go. He couldn't be sure what Crane was doing and that was the fun part.

It only took a few minutes for the doctor to retrieve what he wanted. Once more in the Joker's presence, Crane held up a small unmarked vial containing a transparent solution. It was securely capped.

"For you," the doctor explained.

The Joker didn't hesitate when he took the vial. "Fear toxin?" he guessed.

Crane smiled a thin smile. "No. It's 14 molar, concentrated sulphuric acid. H2SO4 in shorthand, though I'm quite certain you know that."

The Joker laughed. "That's a good one!"

When his laughter petered out, the Joker looked thoughtfully at the vial. "This stuff could be pretty dangerous if it was used a bit… recklessly."

The doctor tried not to think about what he may have just unleashed. It wasn't as if it was his problem. "There are more corrosive compounds available, but sulphuric acid is a nasty dehydrator. Just remember that it could do as much damage to you as to anyone else."

The Joker nodded, but he was still staring at the vial and it was unlikely that he was really listening. He glanced back at Crane. "It's been fun, doc." There was a pause and the clown appeared to think for a moment. "How about a kiss goodbye?"

"Absolutely not," Crane replied without hesitation.

The Joker smirked. "But we were getting on so well."

"That's one way of putting it." Crane adjusted his glasses and sighed. Then he murmured something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like a reprimand. The next moment the Joker was no longer facing Crane.

"That's interesting," the clown mused.

Scarecrow shrugged. "He's not compromising with you, Joker, he's compromising with me."

The Joker's smirk deepened. "You wanted to say goodbye?"

Scarecrow stepped forward with a smirk of his own. He gripped the lapels of the Joker's coat. The clown responded by placing one hand on Scarecrow's hip and the other on his freshly bandaged arm. Scarecrow winced at the tight grip but ignored the flare of pain in favour of crushing his lips against the Joker's. If this was a goodbye kiss, then it would be a good one.

Scarecrow was seized by a restlessness that he seldom experienced. It was hard to find a place to settle his hands. He'd brush fingertips up the Joker's face only to tangle them in his green-tinged hair the next moment. He sank his teeth into the Joker's lip hard enough to draw blood and then swiped his tongue across the wound. The Joker seemed infected by a similar sort of impatience. One minute his hand would dance up Scarecrow's ribs and the next he'd be digging ragged nails into the small of his back.

Maybe this was chaos. There was certainly a tang of fear—a necessary consequence of anything involving the Joker. But perhaps it was just that Scarecrow would miss having a volatile playmate. In the end, Scarecrow wasn't Crane, so analysis slipped away and he just enjoyed the sensation.

The villains pulled back. The Joker ran a hand through his hair and gave a breathless laugh. Scarecrow tried to demonstrate the composure of his counterpart. He wasn't particularly successful. There was an indefinite moment as the Scarecrow and the Joker merely regarded one another.

It was Scarecrow who broke the peculiar silence. "Good luck with Gotham. And the Bat."

The Joker nodded. "Thanks, Scary. Maybe I'll see you around."

The door opened, closed.

Both Crane and Scarecrow reflected for a moment before the doctor regained control and went to work in his lab. As interesting a diversion as the Joker's mind had been, there was experimentation to undertake. Research took precedence, always…

…but maybe, just maybe there was a chance that Crane would actually try to make the headlines again and watch Gotham prostrate itself in abject fear. It would certainly be interesting from a scientific standpoint, on such a large scale. With a few modifications and a little experimentation, he was sure he could come up with a toxin that could produce some particularly _entertaining_ effects.

~X~

**The End**

**Thank you, all**


End file.
